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.

Duke's Foundation Work - Class 2 at All About Dogs

Today was Duke's 2nd time at Beginner's Agility class at All About Dogs. I am happy to say that he did much better. The teacher allowed us to work at a distance from the dogs. We did the following things to get him ready for today:

- No breakfast
- 40 minutes of vigorous fetch at the park prior to class (he was tired and he was sluggish in class, but his focus was solid)
- Foundation work leading up to today - at the risk of any cues being poisoned, we introduced a new cue called "mi-te" which is Japanese for "look" for a focus/watch cue.
- Taking a page from Emily Larham (kikopup) on Youtube - we had a variety of food today such as smoked turkey, roasted chicken, aged cheddar, and bread.
- Got to class 20 minutes early to allow for a 10 minute walk outside and 10 minutes of attention work in the class prior to all the dogs arriving

The work we did today was:

- Down stay on a mat, eyes locked on handler, click at a distance, treat in place
- Turn left, Turn right
- Sit Pretty work
- Perch work (rotate hind leg awareness)
- Call to heel position from down stay
- Heel crossovers (cross from right to left)
- Playing with the equipment
- Play bow

Homework is all of the above!

GREAT JOB DUKE! AND AMAZING JOB HYEDIE!!!! (i just sat back and watched class unfold and took mental notes about Renee's teaching approach as well as the instructions she gave everyone, including us)