March 27, 2003
First day of school!
11:00 a.m.
I apologise for the 'technical difficulties' we were having yesterday (and, unlike CNN, I can't blame it on the damned satellites). I'm still not sure what caused my Moveable Type templates to tank, but I *do* know that it was a mistake to attempt to fix this when I was tired and in a hurry. With a fresh head on my shoulders, I fixed the problem in 20 minutes.
Puppy Kindergarten was fun and chaotic. Dusty was very, very good and I was amazed at how well she handled herself with such a plethora of distractions. She already knows most of the skills that will be taught over the next six weeks, but as she readily demonstrated, her knowledge of these skills fades away in a high-distraction environment.
Case in point: Joy, the instructor, had already seen Dusty respond to the 'down' command, so she asked me to come up front and demonstrate it for the rest of the class. With 20 sets of eyes upon us (both human and canine), Dusty and I walked to the middle of the room. I asked for a 'down'. Dusty sat. I asked for a 'down' again. Dusty looked up at me in confusion and glanced anxiously around the room. I guess we were both nervous.
Finally, I asked her for a sit, then a 'down' and she complied. It was an embarrassing reminder that behaviours that are eagerly offered at home and even around the neighbourhood are not necessarily rock solid in all situations. Clearly, I need to work on Dusty's verbal 'down' (no hand signal) in a variety of different environments. We got started this morning, practising 'down' around the house (Dusty loved it because she got to go up and down the stairs) and we will be practising 'down' around the neighbourhood on our walks.
There was another schnauzer in our class named Kaya - Dusty immediately wanted to play with this new dog-friend. She was really excited. Not surprisingly, the two schauzers were the only dogs who already understood the verbal 'down' command (Schnauzers are reputed to have a quick understanding of verbal language).
There were three very small dogs (by 'small' I mean the size of rats) in the class. They had their very own small-dog pow wow in another room. One of them was a furless terrier (I couldn't stop touching this dog, his skin felt like velveteen under my hands ).
In the Big Dog Room, there was a gold lab, two golden poos (golden retriever/standard poodle mix - my upstairs neighbours have one; They seem to be very popular), a husky of some sort, and a small brown puppy whose breed I've forgotten. The biggest dog of all was a beautiful red bloodhound, who spent most of the session cowering with his tail tucked between his legs (prompting one participant to ask if it was normal for that breed to sit on their tails).
The brown puppy and the bloodhound were kept back after class (doggy dentention?). Dusty and I walked to the subway with Honey the golden poo and her two handlers, one of them a ten-year-old girl. We chatted about clicker training (this class doesn't use a clicker, but uses "Yes!" as a marker) and the curriculum:
- Week 1: Hand signal and verbal command for positions sit and down, settle down
Week 2: Walking on leash, introduction to off
Week 3Introduction to sit/stay, coming when called
Week 4: Whistle recall, down/stay, sitting from a distance
Week 5: Introduce distrations for sit/down stay, sit/stay from a distance, sit from the down position, strengthening the command 'off'
Week 6: Walking on leash outdoors, position stand and trick training