New "era" in obedience training :o)

For 2 weeks now, our obedience trainings have been held indoors. It probably sounds like nothing special for readers abroad, but here dog sports is not so popular. It's a little better with agility, but for obedience we haven't been able to afford this before.

It's sooooo good we are not depending of weather any more. And fingers are not frozen after the training.

Puppy school 24.08

Todays topic was safety in dark. On the picture below Effer is demonstrating reflecting safety jacket to other puppies :o)

Then we started to learn distance control - sit and down when dogs are moving or few steps away from ovner. It's amazing how quickly puppies got the idea.

First Lucky looked at me like he never heard the word "sit" before, but when he got the idea, then by the end of lesson he could already down and spin at few meters distance from me. Providing there was nothing more interesting happening somewhere near of course :o)

Puppy school 17.08

This time our trainer Sveta spoke about different toys. I was glad to hear Kong toys are her favourites too and that she suggested to leave stuff-a-ball to dog if he has to be left home allone. That's how we have done with Rocco for years. We hide his Kong stuff-a-ball for him, and he just can't wait until we leave and he can go to search for it. Lucky has his puppy stuff-a-ball too and he knows very well how to get the food from it.

Here's the picture of collection we had opportunity to try with our dogs. Well, we have almost the same collection at home, and Lucky loves to play, but to all the toys there he preferred my sleeve or to run with his little friend Kessu.

Here's what we have started practising at home - the "heel" position by Silvia Trkman's method:

Now's the place I just have to tell you how much I like Silvia Trkman's page . If you haven't seen her page before, it's really worth to spend some time reading it and looking at her videos. She is a "superstar" in agility and most of the page is on this topic. But even if you are not interested in agility at all, you'll find a lot usful there. Learning tricks is what makes Rocco happy and Lucky is really eager to learn too - and I have got a lot of inspiration from her page as it comes to new tricks.

Here's 2 direct links for you:

Silvia Trkman's puppy school video

and Tani's heeling video

And here is a quote from her page that I recently found and that made me really happy (I explain later why). Silvia Trkman:" I was very surprised to see some people were surprised that I take my puppy on the walk together with other dogs, asking me if I'm not concerned that will influence our bond. Of course, I'm not worried at all. I don't want my puppy to bond with me because I'm the only living being to bond with available. I want my puppy to bond with me because she thinks I'm the most fun of all hundreds of living beings we're meeting per week. "

Before Lucky came to us, I asked experience from other people who are training their dogs and who's oppinion matters to me, and all of them told they had kept their puppies separately from their old dogs in beginning and walked them separately. Mornings and evenings are so limited, if you work from 8 to 17, I just couldn't imagine leaving one dog home until I'm out with the other, what's the fun of having 2 dogs then? Lucky's breeders were the only who told me I won't have any problems, if I keep them together all the time. And they have been together. Silvia Trkman's explanation seems sooo true to me, I couldn't agree more with it. So we do everything together in future too and time will tell if it's good idea or not. So what if they never become world winners, they are already winners or my world anyway!

Puppy school 10.08

Mondays are full day training days for Lucky. And Rocco. They have had free life at country with our daughter and my parents, but soon we have to move back to city. And so we take dogs with us on Monday morning and they'll spend the day by getting used to living in our city home. I'll only stop by at lunch to walk them and feed Lucky. And on evening it's school time. First socializing with public transportation - o boy are we popular :o). Then 1 hour training for Rocco together with our trainer Sveta and her border collie Winnie. And then puppy school! It's so very positive event. We have wonderful trainer and "classmates." This time we learned coming when called, walking on lead without pulling (well, Lucky doesn't need to learn that, he knew it from beginning), standing still, and examining teeth, paws, ears. And some baby-agility - tunnel and hoop. On first schoolday, when Lucky saw the tunnel, he didn't like it very much. So I took Rocco's Royal Canine award set (thank you, Eve) out at home and Rocco showed him what to do with tunnel. And Lucky tried too. We really don't plan to train agility, we even don't think of it before Lucky is a year old. But running tunnels just for fun seems quite innocent for me and Lucky likes it. So tunnel was already familiar for Lucky. The hoop was totally new, but look how well he understood the use of it:

And of course the puppies had opportunity to play. As Rocco don't know how to really play with other dogs - he thinks playing is barking and herding - it's Lucky's good chance to play with friends. Lucky's favourites are Jack Russel Terrier sisters Kessu and Clara. I'm sure, when they grow up, they have no worry with hunting test after playing fox-hunt with Lucky every Monday :o)

Puppy school 03.08

Lucky on the "minefield". There was several different temptations on the field (food, toys) and our goal was to ignore them all. Lucky did excellent. Just like Rocco, he can't even look at food on the ground if he has been told not to take it, he walks away and pretends he doesn't know :o)

Lucky and Rocco teatching me the trick "give us candy":Lucky relaxing
Below you can see a clip of our training. We wasn't prepared for filming, just that Lucky can't wait his turn and offers his little tricks when trainer is working with others. And of course you can't ever ignore the dog during training session. By the time of this video we had done sit and down 100 x and just to keep him busy I tried to teach him backing up. His willingness to work is what I really would like you to look (and comment) in this clip. Look at him when his little friend Kessu comes to invite him to play with her - he still would work with me -sooooo sweet.