Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Wow...what a slacker I am!!! I won't let it go this long w/o blogging again. Not that we've been slacking at home. Lola graduated from Annette's Teen class & started Debby's Manners class, Sherman started Shelley's CGC class & Penny started Rally class.

Lola continues to be a nightmare outside on leash...very reactive & barky...lunging at every dog she sees. I finally realized that on our nightly neighborhood walks she gets particularly stressed & anxious the further we get from the house. This isn't a problem in the car & she is definately not as freaked out once we reach our destination, usually daycare or class (will have to revisit the park soon to see if that has changed). This is a new thing (last 2 months) & she was walked plenty in the neighborhood as a puppy w/o incident. So, I'm working on gradually walking her greater distances and not pushing her. We'll get there.

Sherman is just a flip out in class...his heeling is a mess and the sight of food sends him into a frenzy. I never work on heeling with him b/c he rarely pulls on lead and it wasn's something I felt I needed to invest time in. It would help to have that behavior in tight class environment. A new challenge for us. It should be an interesting 7 weeks.

Penny is a bit rusty as all we've really worked on in the last couple months are her leash manners. I'm only working her a couple times a week & really need to up the anty. By the end of class she was back in the groove. She could be pretty good at this Rally thing if I could commit to a solid daily training schedule for her. I'm gonna drop into Annette's Advanced class a few times so that should help too.

There just aren't enough hours in the day!