I took Zoe to Petsmart yesterday because I knew I’d be taking Otis to class. Otis was not pleased when we left and was quite vocal. I think Zoe is used to me taking Otis to class or to the vet, but he’s not used to being left alone in the house. We were only gone for a half hour, and I made it up to Otis by taking them both for a walk immediately.
Otis and I had our last leash aggression class yesterday. We met by the pavilion at Como Park, which was quite convenient for me, being only a couple miles away and all. He had a minor incident where the group was walking and he got too close to another dog. Even though I tried to wear him out before class, he was still pulling on the leash for the first part of class, so we had to teach Otis that he wasn’t allowed to lead. He’s still showing tons of improvement with other dogs, and he was pretty mellow around the rest of the dogs in the class.
I’m really glad we took the class. It was through the Canine Coach, and I got to meet three of their staff and was extremely impressed with everyone. If you’re in the Twin Cities area, I would highly recommend their classes.
After a morning of activity, I abandoned them later that evening to see Green Day at Target Center. Before the show, they were encouraging people to send text messages and pictures to display on the jumbotron. Dog photos got good responses, and everyone in the arena got to see this:
July 13, 2009 at 1:35 pm |
that is a wonderful picture. no surprise they chose that for the jumbotron!
i clicked on the canine coach link. no way could riley learn from dogs of that size. he’d be terrified. he is very frightened of big dogs. that was one problem with his puppy training; there was a class of Bernese Mountain Dogs in the session just before us, and every week we’d walk into Dog Days on grand avenue and there’d be six or eight mountain dogs, and he’d scream and try to run out the door again.
and our instructor’s dog was a german shepherd, which had him so frightened she had to put her dog in a kennel for the session. consequently, she did not like riley (or me) very much. not a great class.
July 14, 2009 at 1:10 pm |
Oh, poor Riley! And you want training to be positive for both you and your dog, not stressful. I’m sorry to hear you had such a bad experience.
I might have written about this earlier, but Zoe had the opposite problem in her puppy class. She was a giant among little dogs. She’s a big girl anyway, but I was really hoping the class would provide socialization opportunities.
I do wonder what would happen if she met a mastiff or a wolfhound or something larger than she is. She’s not intimidated by much, so she’d probably just go right up and sniff them if allowed. Her love for attention overrides pretty much everything else.