ABC's & 123's...or perhaps sit, stay, come

Last week Sally and I started our K9 Kindergarten class at the Pekin Park District. It's the same class that I took Midas to four years ago. Midas graduate from Kindergarten, but he was certainly a terror at the beginning. He was barking so much the first night that I'm pretty sure no one in the class heard a thing that the instructor said. That was the first night that I used a pinch collar on Midas and without that we would have been Kindergarten drop outs.

So I knew what to expect this time having been before. Sally likes other dogs, usually more than other people, so I thought she might enjoy that aspect, though she is pretty nervous when she doesn't have Lucy there to show her what to do. It was very nice to not be the owner of the loud and obnoxious dog in the class. We practiced walking in a big circle, which she is pretty good at, though when we stop she is supposed to sit down, and we were not so good at that. We also practiced two kinds of turns - about turns and u turns. The u-turns were a bit of struggle that involved a lot of pushing with my knee. At one point one of the naughty dogs was being used by the instructor for a demonstration and he was getting yelled at a lot and Sally just turned around and faced the wall so she wouldn't have to watch :) We're just a bit sensitive. So while we weren't terrible, we also didn't really do most of the things that we were supposed to do. They told us to practice every day at home, which we've tried a few times - she is soooo not amused when I put her leash on and try to get her to walk laps in the back yard. Maybe if I gave out hot dogs as treats like the instructor did! (Though Sally wouldn't actually take the piece of hot dog from her hand...)