Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Petey's going back to school




Good news! All About Dogs is having a daytime Monday agility class. Since I am busy teaching classes every weekday night, going to other dog training school classes is nearly impossible. Not anymore!

Petey is going back to school next Monday. About a year ago I withdrew him from classes because he was a reactive monster. It will be nice to go back and start fresh again.

Since last year, I have worked considerably on reducing Petey's reactivity towards dogs. In general these are the approaches I have taken:

- Letting Petey meet 100s of dogs so that dogs become "boring".
- Reinforcing appropriate dog-dog behavior (butt sniff, crotch sniff) and calming signals (ground sniff, yawn, look away, leave)
- Reinforcing "watch me" behavior
- Reinforcing passing dogs on the street and maintaining a loose leash by either a) Cueing him to "say hello", or b) Food
- Training him at the dog park especially when it's busy
- Taking him to his own special "Petey Needs Training" classes at When Hounds Fly (a perk of owning your own dog training school I guess)
- Taking him to Pawsway to train.

Recently, I took Petey to a volunteer/rescue event where he even did a little heelwork routine in front of an audience of people and dogs and he did great!

I'm looking forward to finally having fun at All About Dogs.