Fall

According to the calendar, it is fall. Since it has been over 90 degrees every day of fall until today, I'm having trouble believing it. Anyway, because fall has started, I figured I needed to start writing again about Ms. Morgan's training. WE have been very busy. Morgan has had two swimming lessons (one in a pool and one in a lake). She has had two obedience lessons with Suzanne. We have been diligently training albeit only a few minutes a day but we're getting better.

The biggest struggle I am having with Morgan is her screaming in her crate. On the first day of school, there was a major thunderstorm and Morgan completed destroying the door to the dog room. As a result, she was running around the house free as a bird when I got home from class. It was then, that she has been relegated to her crate because I just do not trust her to have run of the house. At first she screamed in her crate when I put her in there at night. She stopped doing that so much and now she is screaming at 5:00 in the morning. I don't know which is worse. They both disturb my sleep. Anyway, there were times when I literally wanted to kill her for all the noise she was making. My anger actually scared me if it didn't scare her. Sunday morning, I was so furious at her and nothing was working to shut her up that I rolled her and her crate out onto the porch and I went back to bed.

I always tell my students that if it doesn't work, do something else. So last night, I decided to put her crate in my room and start all over with crate training. She is quiet as a mouse in my room except that she did wake up and move around a lot at 5:00 but she did not whine. Yay! She will sleep in my room while we complete the crate games video. Once we are done with the crate games video and she is loving her crate, I will start to move her out of my room. I sure hope it works. I'm not supposed to have dogs in my room which means that I will probably have to bathe her every other week if she is sleeping in my room.

The other problem we are having is about toy motivation. However it is 11:30 and I'm pretty pooped so I will have to write about that tomorrow.

First private obedience lesson

Sometimes I feel like I'm all over the place with Morgan's training. It doesn't make sense to me so it couldn't make sense to her. We had our first obedience lesson today to try to organize it in my brain a little more. We rode up with a new friend who is new to this obedience stuff and loves what she saw at a dog show a year ago. She saw me show Merlin at the poodles specialty last year. She now has an 8 month old cream standard poodle who is a sweetheart. Unfortunately, like Morgan did at that age, he drooled during the whole ride poor baby.

Anyway, before I get to our lesson, I have to talk about another disappointing experience. I took Morgan to a pet store that focuses on gun dogs. I was excited to take her there because she is a fiendish retriever -- at home, in our own back yard. In the store she barely even chased the bumper and the only thing she was interested in was exploring the place and stealing the doggie treats. SO EMBARRASSING. I went to the lesson with a heavy heart already.

I rallied, however, as I got my stuff together for our lesson. Suzanne asked me to warm Morgan up and I did our usual routine of pushing on her sides and shoulders and having her chase me but her heart wasn't in the game much. She was still too interested in her surroundings to pay much attention to me. More disappointment! I was starting to think that this girl will never be a performance dog--to reactive.

After a few minutes though, she realized that I had food and that did change things. She was able to do a descent heeling circle but the take off was poor. So we worked on the first step. This was also a major disappointment to me be cause we had worked on the first step so hard. We practiced that first step and I have for homework to work on that. We definitely will.

Morgan does outstanding fronts but her finishes suck. We worked some right finishes and we were instructed to do 20 finishes 5 times each day. Whew! But I guess she'll get finishes after that :)

Heeling fronts and finishes those are the key skills that she will need for the rest of her obedience performance life so we may as well get them down as good as gold.

The other thing she asked me to do is to train her in an areas where there are distractions but not distractions that are too close. I know some perfect places to take her. We'll probably start in the backyard LOL :)

I wrote to obedience poodle list that I found out that I was too wishy washy and that is true. My instructions to her were not clear and I was accepting performances that I shouldn't accept. She has made me mindful of how lax I am getting. So I have to be more black and white and I have to correct her when she defies me and do it like I mean it. Morgan responds to this well. She knows exactly what she should be doing and she just pushes the envelope and that is exactly what I do not have the luxury of letting her do.

I keep thinking of Ruff Love. Well, yeah! I have been too lazy and unmotivated (a whole other story) to stick to my guns but play time is over. As I said in my post to poodle obedience, Morgan is in obedience/agility boot camp. I have many plans for us and even though I started out feeling really depressed about Morgan's performance today at Stan's and Suzanne's, as usual the reason she is the way she is is because of me, duh!!! I have GOT TO stop letting her get away with stuff. She has been doing that for almost six years so it will be a rude awakening for her--for both of us. Playtime is over