train my dog

Rookie is 18 months old now and the dog training is going really well. It’s definitely an ongoing effort. We finished the Advanced Training Class a couple of months ago and just recently finished a tricks class. The tricks class was a lot of fun. Rookie can now sit up and beg, roll over, play dead / go to sleep, shake hands, give a high five, say he’s sorry, spin, and crawl!

I’m planning to take the Canine Good Citizenship test with Rookie this fall, but I’m going to do a tune-up workshop with him first on loose leash walking. He still gets excited on walks and pulls a bit on his leash. So we still need to work on that.

Training is going well. My dog Rookie turned one year old last week and we just finished the intermediate obedience class. I’ve decided to continue on and sign up for the advanced obedience class which starts in a couple of weeks.

Rookie has been doing great with his training. We started the Intermediate class and we’re working on his reliability with distractions. His recall is great. We were at the dog park yesterday and he came running every single time I called. I was also able to walk with Rookie on the wooded trails nearby with him off leash. When my friend’s dog took off running into the woods, Rookie came right back when I called him. Pretty impressive for an 8 month old!! All the effort is paying off.

Well, we successfully completed Puppy Kindergarten last night. Training is going quite well, but of course, this is just the start of it all!

We’re going to take a couple of weeks off and then move on to the intermediate class. Eventually I’d like him to pass the Canine Good Citizenship test and get certified as a Therapy Dog. So, it’s a long road ahead, but we’re on the road and making progress.

Well it turns out that I’ve been using the Leave It command to mean Drop it. Rookie doesn’t have it down 100 percent yet, so it’s probably worth it to change the command and have him work on the new one.

Take it doesn’t seem to be a problem, he picked up on that one really quickly. Getting him to completely ignore something he really wants with the leave it command is going to be a challenge. But that’s got to be one of the tougher commands, so if he gets that one… we’re golden.

Tonight was kind of a waste of time. We practiced two things… sit and getting the dog to stay close to you. The hard part was getting him not to do those two things so that I could actually give the command to get him to do them! It was kind of weird.

I’m going to give the trainer a call this week to find out if I should be transferring to an intermediate class.

Some of it will be a bit basic since Rookie will already sit, stay, come, and walk (most of the time) on a loose leash. We’re still working on down.

I think what will be good is for him to practice all of these commands with the distraction of a lot of other puppies around him. Plus they have a little time at the end of class when the puppies get to just play with each other. That should be a lot of fun for him and I’ll enjoy watching it.

Rookie is now 12 weeks old and is doing great walking on the leash. He still pulls every once in a while, but for the most part he walks at my side about a half a step behind me. He picked it up really quickly.

So I’ve been very pleased with how quickly my puppy is learning basic commands. The latest command he learned is “leave it.” When we’re out on a walk if he picks up piece of trash or starts chewing on a rock or something else undesirable, all I have to do is say “Leave it!” and he drops it immediately and comes running to me and sits in front of me waiting for a treat. This is great when you consider all of the trash and junk you we encounter when on our walks.

What I just realized tonight is that he has learned how to manipulate me! He will pick up a rock and turn around and look at me. He’s waiting for me to tell him to leave it so that he can get a treat out of the deal! He’s no dummy.

He’s 11 weeks old and so far he’s got sit, come, stay and leave it all down to some degree. Leave it was new yesterday. Oh, and he’s been retrieving things and bringing them back to me for the past couple of weeks, but he just learned that if he wants to keep playing he needs to drop it. Working on the jumping thing but I realize that’s going to be an ongoing issues for a Golden Retriever and next week I’ll start to work on heel.