Obedience Class

We've had Chuy almost two weeks, and we have been learning how to be good dog owners as she is learning to be a good dog. She has already learned how to sit on command and is mostly house trained (although every time we say that it seems she has an accident).

Neither one of us have ever trained a dog how to walk on a leash. I kinda just thought you put the leash on, she would start walking and then realize when she hit the end of the line that she needed to stay closer to me. Not the case. She runs ahead, runs behind, runs to the side. Chuy strains on her leash so hard I would get really worried that she was going to hurt her neck. Apparently this is not as easy as we thought it would be!

So I started reading. Everyone agrees a dog in training should be on a harness so the neck is safe, so I got one of those. But then everything was geared toward a dog that pulled forward- you should stop until she stops pulling. Chuy pulls occasionally, but most of the time she is behind us, sniffing, stopping, and recently, sitting (usually in the middle of the street). So I didn't know what to do. I tried waiting out the stops while keeping pressure on the leash- but the stops just kept getting longer. I tried keeping her on a super short leash so she couldn't get too far away, but that just seemed to really anger her. We got to the point where she wouldn't come in the door anymore.

What to do? We went to the library and checked out three dog training books. We signed up for obedience class. We can't make the first one, so the trainer said we could come in that day and have a make up class.

We walked in and went to the training area, where Chuy promptly pooped. Luckily, that was not indicative of how the session went. Turns out it was a private lesson, which was great. We asked his all our questions and he really helped with everything from jumping up to eating and even walking.

As we should have guessed, it turns out the problem was us. Apparently have been using our clicker all wrong. We had phased out the treats way too early and now she didn't trust us. We are now way more consistent that clicker means treat every time, and even in the 15 hours since we went to the class things have improved dramatically! She wasn't walking because we clicked it every time she walked forward, but never gave her a treat.

Now we have homework, and her next class will be on the 17th- we hope for even more improvement!