Zo zo's mom
02-24-2008, 09:54 AM
OK, today was frustrating. First of all, I am slightly hung over (we went out last night for one of our best friends birthday to a Spanish restaurant and the Mojitos were great) and we had car trouble and had to borrow my FILs car.
We get to class and they start the warm up with verbal and hang signals and then just hand signals for sit and down. Down has apparently fallen out of Zo zo's head. She just won't do it. Then they add giving verbal and hand signals while not standing directly in front of your dog (e.g., with your back to them, standing far away, etc.) and she does great with sit...down is still MIA. She moves to stays with distractions and my little one is distracted with the clapping hands and the toy. This is so different from last week.
Thank goodness we move to Heeling exercises (with fast paces, slow paces, normal paces, turns and sits) and she does really great.
http://s208.photobucket.com/albums/bb171/lizboo_2007/?action=view¤t=2008004.flv
Then you have to make your dog sit-stay and then back away and get them to come and sit. She doesn't want to stay, but comes right away. Shaky, but passable.
Then she does really great and sitting in front and in finish position. She does it with only hand commands. Today is like a yo yo.
Then there are timed sit-stays and down-stays. She does the sit one perfectly, but decides to keep doing front to finish sits instead of doing down-stay.
The last exercise is a relay race with different stops where you have to get the dog to sit, heel with a turn, sit-stay while you walk a circle around them. We had Anakin and Stanley and we won.
The trainer said the down thing is a learning plateau and just be patient and go a little backwards in her training and it will come back even stronger. I hope so. She also wants us to have a trick for the last class (it is not required, but is a nice thing to do). We are going to get Zo zo to "mongoose" (stand on her back legs) on command.
Today was frustrating. It happens though. We didn't have as much time this week to work on homework and it showed. I just want Down to come back and us to move forward and keep progressing.
We get to class and they start the warm up with verbal and hang signals and then just hand signals for sit and down. Down has apparently fallen out of Zo zo's head. She just won't do it. Then they add giving verbal and hand signals while not standing directly in front of your dog (e.g., with your back to them, standing far away, etc.) and she does great with sit...down is still MIA. She moves to stays with distractions and my little one is distracted with the clapping hands and the toy. This is so different from last week.
Thank goodness we move to Heeling exercises (with fast paces, slow paces, normal paces, turns and sits) and she does really great.
http://s208.photobucket.com/albums/bb171/lizboo_2007/?action=view¤t=2008004.flv
Then you have to make your dog sit-stay and then back away and get them to come and sit. She doesn't want to stay, but comes right away. Shaky, but passable.
Then she does really great and sitting in front and in finish position. She does it with only hand commands. Today is like a yo yo.
Then there are timed sit-stays and down-stays. She does the sit one perfectly, but decides to keep doing front to finish sits instead of doing down-stay.
The last exercise is a relay race with different stops where you have to get the dog to sit, heel with a turn, sit-stay while you walk a circle around them. We had Anakin and Stanley and we won.
The trainer said the down thing is a learning plateau and just be patient and go a little backwards in her training and it will come back even stronger. I hope so. She also wants us to have a trick for the last class (it is not required, but is a nice thing to do). We are going to get Zo zo to "mongoose" (stand on her back legs) on command.
Today was frustrating. It happens though. We didn't have as much time this week to work on homework and it showed. I just want Down to come back and us to move forward and keep progressing.