Dog Training Progress: Stay
January 28, 2013This is a post about the pups. Because who doesn’t love cute dogs?
As I’ve mentioned before, our pup Calliope is enrolled in dog training classes, and is learning some new obedience rules. While she’s been pretty good at the standard sit for a little while now, we’ve been working in sit stay at distance and with duration. She’s been a rock star when it comes to this.
She has also becoming a lot more consistent with her “downs,” which is something she didn’t even know how to do two weeks ago.
And even knows the difference between sit-stay and down-stay, because she’ s a smarty!
Since I’ve been in training mode with Calliope, I’ve been polishing up some of Franki’s skills as well. In particular we’ve been learning off leash heels.
And while Franki has been a pro at rolling over for years now, it never hurts to review!
Both of the girls have been learning some manners at meal times. I have to admit, I have been a slacker at making them work for their food for a long while up until recently and usually just plopped it down lazily. These days, though, they have been made to wait patiently at some distance for me to prepare their food, bring it back to them, set it down in front of them, walk away again and give them the cue that it’s okay to go ahead and eat. You would think the hardest part of this would be the last part, having that tasty temptation right in front of them with me so far away, but actually they have been pretty darn good about waiting me out at that juncture. So far the times when I have had to “reset” was while I am preparing their food, because the “clink clink” of the food dropping in their bowls gets them a little overly excited. When the food is down, though, they know darn well that they don’t get to eat it until I give them the go ahead, which I think is pretty impressive on their parts. Go pups!
Tomorrow we have our second session of class, I am looking forward to getting some new homework to work on with Calliope!