She met her friends Roman (a yellow lab a few weeks older than Raelyn who goes poo 8 times a day, unlucky raisers...) and Joyce (a black lab almost 5 months old). Raelyn was very excited to meet everyone and was full of it.
First we practiced walking on a loose leash. Ha! Good luck with that. Raelyn wasn't really interested in participating in the lesson. She was having too much fun not paying attention and trying to play tug of war with her leash. She did well sometimes, but was all over the place the rest of the time. Over the weekend, we switched to using a thicker leather leash and that seemed to help a lot! She didn't chew the leash as much and responded quickly to small collar corrections.
The other thing we worked on at the meeting was the "Go to Bed" command. Because the meeting was at a new house with lots of fun and exciting new smells, the expectation for Raelyn's obedience wasn't too high. However, she got it right away! She ignored the distractions, laid down right on her towel and stayed there. She even came when I called her and then went back to bed. It was so exciting to see her do so well and remember the commands.
To spice it up at home now, we are making her run the gauntlet of much lusted after kitty toys while performing "Go to Bed" and "Come" commands. I line up the kitty toys and she just runs right past them! Sometimes she will stop and sniff, but then quickly remember what she was supposed to do. It is so funny to watch the gears in her head turn.
She is also rapidly learning "Wait". Before she would just go wherever it was she wanted to go, but now we can tell her to "Sit" and then "Wait" and she will sit and wait patiently while you move away from her until you tell her the next command. Pretty cool!
No comments:
Post a Comment