Today was the second lesson of Ringo’s obedience course. This is stage two of basic obedience and after my dad had him for all of stage one (which he did this spring), I had said I’d do at least some of stage two. Last week, I had too much work to go along, but today I decided I could take the time out. It proved to be an ... interesting experience.
Ringo was just as bad to start with as he is at every darn show. That is, totally hyperactive and interested in everything but us. My dad had him for the first few exercises, and then I decided to give it a try. In-between, the instructor also borrowed him for a while after I had asked a question, and he was a little terror with him at first, jumping around all the time. But he worked on him with short, sharp tugs (very controlled, not like the ones where someone tries to tug the dog’s head off ;P) and lots of praise, and eventually Ringo calmed down and started circling him and looking at him. It was very interesting to watch his facial expressions at this stage. It reminded me a lot of how someone would work a horse in a round pen, and gave me some good ideas for how to continue at home.
Of course, while at the lesson, I didn’t have much success being a ‘dog whisperer’. ;P He did quite a bit of jumping on me and biting and growling, like he does at the shows when we ask him to behave instead of play with everyone. However, after a while, it started improving, and the final exercise (a repeat of the lie down and lie still we had failed abysmally at the start) went pretty well. I finished off by asking how we should tackle the situation when he gets super-excited at the start of a lesson (or a show) and the instructor said that we need to stay calm, of course, and then set firm limits to get him to chill out a bit. Our mistake so far has been to sit him down and wait for him to cool off, instead of tackling the problem by immediately demanding at least some small exercises.
I’ve got a lot to do this week, to prepare for the show next Sunday.