Contrasts

May 31, 2008

Interesting rest of day yesterday. First tried working with both Kruiser and Pat before dinner and as Deborah had predicted, they were much more responsive to the treat-incentive training. We did the heel course and some sits, downs, stands, stays (the latter for Pat only). And then Kruiser ate a huge dinner. I took them for a creek walk after dinner and Kruiser was so full of himself and very tuggy and lunged to chase Pat or visit other dogs (I had not put on the prong collar because I thought I had made some headway with his regular collar on the morning walk up the mountain.) It got so bad that I had to turn around and go a less traveled route.

Then I took Kruiser into DIA to pick up Ed and he was wonderful—very good at staying close, took a huge pee on the cement parking lot floor before we even got in, sat nicely and was friendly and responsive to the many people who asked to pat him. Not the same dog as on the creek path. I wonder if he knows the difference when he wears his vest or if his tugginess is just around other dogs or if being in a new setting, he knows to be good. Kruiser and I spent an hour wandering around, getting ice cream (for me), sitting, letting folks pat him, and lots of time explaining what he was in training to do. For all the people that petted him, he only wagged his tail for Ed when he finally arrived.

Today he was very subdued (tired from yesterday!) until we took both dogs for another creek walk. This time we used the prong collar and he was better, but still seemed to want to walk with pressure on the collar. I tried a couple of big pops and “ockts” per Deborah’s suggestion, but they only helped short term. Coolest thing was seeing him in the creek water. He pranced and pounced so much we decided to see if he would swim in the Lion’s Park pond. Sure enough, he did. He’s a water dog in a big way!