As with all of you, life happens, and I have been busy, too busy to do much formal training with my dogs other than puppy classes in the last year or so. I’ve gotten rusty, and so have they.
Determined to get back into the circuit, I registered Izzy, my prima donna, for an advanced obedience class which started last night. Izzy has not been in class for a couple of years during which time she has given us two nice litters of puppies. She has now been spayed so it is time to let her shine once again. Every household has a dog that is the “straight A” student, and Izzy is ours. She is so in tune, it is pretty impressive and she LOVES to work.
I have as a goal to ready her to go into the competitive obedience ring at some point. Since we are a partnership, I have to fine tune my skills while she does the same. I have found that I can obviously practice at home, but the training class setting is important. Izzy struggles with her confidence around boisterous dogs and animated people and tends to over react to “scare” them away. Because of that personality trait, the time among the other dogs is very very important for her. As she works, she zeros in on me and forgets all the chaos around her.
The biggest obstacle to attending class is drive time for me, but I am very happy with the trainers and nice facility at Almost Home Training in Louisville, KY. I like to understudy those that have had competitive experience because they have an edge over those that have not been in the ring because they haven’t just read the books, they’ve done it themselves.
If you haven’t taken your dogs to training classes, you’ll find it is addictive and the pride you feel when your dog accomplishes a new skill is just plain fun.
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