I’ve been taking Lila to the Superstore. Not to shop but to train her around people, work with her excessive excitability. Usually, after a couple of minutes, she gets the idea and will sit and stay on command. I’m also hanging out a little bit at the school bus stop in the morning (which just happens to be at the top of my driveway and the timing coincides with our long morning walk!). Besides enjoying meeting my neighbors, I’m hearing stories of other difficult dogs and Lila is learning to sit and be petted by children (not jump up in excitement even when she wants to do so).
Yesterday I tried walking her in Halifax. Usually when we are there we go on the side streets, take a nice ambling walk through the lovely tree-lined, quiet areas. But I thought it was time to take her to the main drag where traffic is heavy and people won’t have time to admire her. But we never got there. Just the sight of the large walls of buildings frightened her and she dug her feet into the pavement and wouldn’t budge. So I gave up for now.
Meanwhile, with intensified training at home and otherwise, she has bouts of teenage rebellion (jumping up on me and thinking it’s fun for both of us) and I don’t enjoy that one bit. She’s still in school—one more week. The instructor says the important thing is for me to be calm, not raise my voice, get excited, say “no” or any other more spontaneous command. Just settle her down quietly, firmly and forcefully and then get her working (on her obedience such as sit/stay or down/stay or walk by my side) again. Wow! When she is good, she is very very good!
Posted by leya at September 12, 2006 10:35 AM | TrackBack