I Regress

First of all, let me say we survived all the weather yesterday.  It hasn’t rained today, it’s still wet outside though.  A few of the golf courses around here were closed today.  It must be serious if they close the golf courses!

Ready to play in the muck!

I have something bad to admit.  Life has gotten so crazy and the weather was so hot and nasty this summer that I haven’t been taking Riley on walks like I should have.  I thought playing in the backyard would meet her energy needs, and it did, but it didn’t meet her training needs.  Riley was in obedience school for about 10 months.  She used to be a fairly good walker on leash (good enough to get her TDI certification), but now she’s regressed.  If she sees a squirrel, she tries to bolt!  I stopped taking her to school after she got her TDI certification because I didn’t like the way some things were being handled in the class.  There was a big dog that would growl throughout the entire class and would mount Riley or jump on her.  She’s already afraid of bigger dogs and that just wasn’t helping.  So we stopped going.

Let me just suffice it to say that we are signing up for a different school because Riley needs some work…  She did fine on her therapy visit to the nursing home today (we haven’t been in about a month), but I know she can do a lot better too.  She seems to know that when we’re in the nursing home she needs to chill out and behave, so that’s good.  I took her on a walk in the neighborhood yesterday and she basically dragged me down the street.  Luckily she doesn’t do that on therapy visits or I wouldn’t let her go on visits.

She also feels the need to jump on visitors at our house.  She doesn’t jump on the residents at the nursing home (again, I think it’s a sixth sense thing) or people out in public, but if you come into our house, she’ll jump on you at least once.  So we’re going back to school to get trained.  I’m also going to see if we can work on the weekends at the school gym and school yard my mom works at.  That’ll be a place with minimal distractions.

Oh, and several people commented on how soft she was!  I guess this new shampoo with conditioner really works!

Impressed With New Trainer

So I went for a consultation with the new dog trainer I was trying out.  I was very impressed.  We hopefully have a solution for her fear of larger dogs, jumping up on people that come in our house, and wanting to eat our food when we eat on the couch.  I’ve already tried out how to keep her away from my food while I’m eating on the couch and it worked well.  I had her sitting in front of me on the floor while I was eating a snack on the couch and I fed her a treat every so often if she was being good.  She wasn’t a problem at all.  Eventually we can wean her off of the treats and she should just sit on the floor and leave my food alone.  We have all the tools we need to succeed and I don’t need to take her in for training unless what we do doesn’t work.  Anyway, I will be in touch with this trainer and hopefully we won’t have any issues.