Penny is SO happy to be back in class!! We started Annette's Advanced Basic class tonight. I was a little nervous that Penny would be outta practice & rusty, as we really haven't worked much in the last few months. But I just love my girl! She did super.
We've taken Shelley's AB class at least 3 times. I love it b/c she changes it everytime based on the level of the dogs in class. This is the first time I've actually taken class from Annette. The class was really good too. Annette's approach to training is different than Shelley's. Shelley is a clicker trainer & her class is, for the most part, purely positive...Annette is what I call balanced positive. She does use training collars and leash corrections, but 80-85% of the training is based around a positive approach, using lots of praise & food/toy rewards. I've been working w/ her for a year & have never felt uncomfortable with her methods. She has quite a way with dogs and is an excellent trainer. The same can be said about Shelley. They just have different styles.
Anyway, we did lots of heeling. Penny did pretty well with that...her fantastic attention hasn't changed one bit. She doesn't take her eyes off me. She does get a bit distracted when another dog is up her butt but recovers quickly. We did 'round the room and heeling toward other dogs...no problem there. She also had us all practice attention while a single dog heeled around the room...good with that. We worked on automatic sits & here lies the rusty part. Penny loves to swing out on the sit to face me. Probably from all of our attention work. But she has always done this. So I worked her against a wall & it worked like a charm. Now we just have to practice more at home. Next week is sit stays...oh yeah! (roll eyes). I hate stays...they're so boring! But necessary & we could use the practice. That's what we'll be working on this week.
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