train my dog

My new goal is to start at the beginning and work on each lesson 5 minutes, three times a day, for two weeks each.

HA!

The only training I’ve done is to get him to sit down instead of jumping and acting crazy when I come home. I just started by ignoring him untill he sat on his own. Then I’d pet him. Now I get annoyed and I say, “Sit” and he does. Then he gets up and runs around some more.

I told my husband that I would start going over all the lessons he’s done with the dog at classes. So far, I haven’t done that. Hubby keeps telling me that the dog isn’t good at the wait command and he won’t pass the intermediate class if he can’t do it. Anyway, this morning I remembered to tell the dog to wait before going into the house. It took a few tries but he got it. Now I just have to remember to keep doing it…and find the training book and start working with him like I promised.

...I’m not even sure if he did it. I’m wondering if my husband trained the dog not to rush the door when we leave or if the dog just decided not to on his own. Maybe it’s one of those accidental training things. We didn’t realize we were training him that if we didn’t want him to come with us, he wasn’t going to come, no matter what, so now he doesn’t even try. It’s soooo fantastic. Dog is still super crazy when we come back though. Sometimes even if we just step outside and come back in for something but I think that’s only when we’re both outside.

My husband went to all the classes. The dog still isn’t that trained though. We still have to work on it. The one thing I really wanted to accomplish was to get him to heel and not become a crazy-pulling-dog whenever he saw something he could chase. We had this thing called a gentle leader that really seemed to work. My husband wasn’t using it when I left but he started soon after. Anyway, I hope he isn’t putting too much pressure on it when he walks the dog. Because that will cause the dog to just ignore the thing and pull anyway since the goal of the gentle leader is to cause pressure when the dog pulls and release pressure when he doesn’t. If there’s never a release of pressure, the dog will always pull anyway.

Well, in a week, I’ll find out.

My husband, that is. I made sure to give him a call so he would be up and ready to take the dog to class.

There’s a dog up here that I’d like to try to teach some tricks to. We just built her a new dog house. Her old one was pretty small and she’d go in it sometimes but generally sat on top of it, or beside it…She’s not in a rush to get into her new one either.

The course I have him in is 8 weeks long but for the next few months I won’t be here. My husband is going to have to take him to classes by himself.

That’s not bad but I got him from the pound and I figured, him being pretty untrained is what got him there in the first place. I figure he ran after some squirrel or something and got lost. We are taking classes at petsmart right now because my initial goal of training when I got him never got done. He knew how to sit when we first got him but after a few months with us he completely forgot – or realized he didn’t have to. Now he only sits when there’s a treat on the line and you don’t even have to ask.