Two weeks ago, I failed to record a fairly significant piece of news: Dionne's advancement into the Advanced class. We go to the one that's held in San Diego. It runs from 8 to 9 p.m. Mondays. Maybe because that's a bit late, there were only 2-3 other dogs in it. And ALL of them will be turned in for their advanced training in Oceanside in mid-February. We don't know if Dionne will be an only student then. That would be something different.
That class two weeks ago didn't go so smoothly. Bob asked us to have our pups execute the Jump command, and even though Dionne had been routinely Jumping from our lower yard up to the pool level, in class she froze and balked at jumping up on the class bench. Bob worked with her for a good five minutes, but all Dionne wanted was to hide out Under the bench.
Monday night was a different story. I tried having her jump up from the closed narrow side, figuring that maybe the open bottom scared her. She refused, but then I scooped her up, plopped her on the bench, let her walk around a bit, ordered her off, then ordered her to Jump again. That did it. She succeeded and seemed to enjoyed being praised by everyone in the room. She did it over and over.
We still have to work on a few other Advanced commands, notably the Visit and the Back. But she's acing everything else.
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