Day Two of Doggy Training: First day of class

Well, today was interesting. The first half of the day was lectures on Orientation to Team Training and Canine & Motivation. The second half was Command introduction. We practiced on our Instructor and then on 4 of the 7 dogs that are available for placement. It was actually hard.

There are a series of steps in commanding a dog. 1) get the dogs attention (of course you only have a few moments to tell the dog what you want it to do, so timing is everything!), 2) give the command (the inflection in your voice has everything to do with it) 3) if the dog performs the correct action you praise it, and that is the end of that command, if it does not preform the command, you have to correct the behavior, right then and there, when you correct the behavior you repeat the steps, getting the dogs attention and then giving the command again and then praising. I know it sounds simple, but when you have to think about what you are doing it is hard.

The next lesson was walking with the dog and doing the command steps (first Ken the instructor than a dog. I worked with a couple different dogs. It was pretty cool.

I know you want to know about the dogs. I can't tell you their names yet, but they are cool names! However, I can describe the dogs. All four were females, two were pure labs, they were so white! around their muzzles and face, down the chest, on their bellies and down parts of their legs, the rest of their coloring was a light yellow. The other two were female and lab/golden mix. One was a typical light golden color, and the other was black. They all were quite beautiful! You might be wondering why I can't give names yet, that is because they have procedures in which to inform the puppy raiser, when their dog is placed, and they don't want to ruin it for them until the puppy is for sure placed.

The volunteers feed us lunch and then after class was over for the day we got to meet most of the employees of the CCI, then a tour of the campus. Very cool! There is a block of cement in the kennel area that Charles Schultz drew Snoopy. He just picked up a stick and drew! I will see if I can get a picture of it.

Well, I got a couple quizzes to do. I will ask couple of the questions and would be interested in your responses (if you want to contribute).

1) What qualities would make you a good Team Training Student?

2)What are three ways you can motivate your dog?

Peace!
C