Puppy Class

I am leading a drop in puppy class on Wednesday night. This was the second week and it has been lots of fun. We are working on foundation skills for obedience and for agility. I have found it really helpful to be able to work Pixel in a group setting. I find that I miss that alot with my dogs as typically I teach the class and leave my own dogs at home.

I work with Pixel every day- but it is good to be able to teach her to learn and listen when there are other dogs around. The class has a cavlier pup, a collie, a sheltie, and a staffordshire bull terrier. Everyone in the group is what a call a "Performance" home- they want their dogs to play agility, flyball, or obedience when they grow up. It is nice to work with like minded people.

Anyway, last night we did a lot of stuff and I was very pleased with how well Pixel worked.

We started with playing with the pups- tugging, fetch, chasing, more tugging. Pixel was all over that :o)

We did some "Choosing to heel" games which I was surprised she did so well at. We have hardly worked on this but she was great! Heads up, looking for the cookie. She's so cute.

For the first time we played the "Attention" game- Pixel doesn't quite get it yet, but we'll work on it at home. She has a short attention span to begin with and doesn't know yet about eye contact.

Then we brought the stools out and did some perch work- this is probably Pixels favorite game. She thinks the stool is a magic treat dispenser :o). We had the puppies start moving around the stool to build rear end awareness.

I have been struggling with getting a good hand touch with her- she is reluctant and we've had to build this up really slowly- we now get a good push, but her aim sucks :o)

We also introduced a clear target plate tonite- for a nose touch. This will be for building good contact behaviors- and useful for teaching Go Outs in obedience, as well as distance in agility. Pixel likes the target plate a little too much still....

Then we started shaping a go round around a pylon. I had started this at home this week and Pixel understands to move around the pylon- we have it about 4 feet away now.

We ended on Sits and Downs, and then of course gave them a chance to play together.

Puppies are so fun!