Tuesday night was dog class and I'm not sure where the real Seppel went, because the dog that was with me was a rockstar!
The awesomeness started with out of motion stands. I didn't think Sepp would understand this, especially because we had been practicing out of motion sits and downs, BUT, he totally got it! Really, with every exercise we did last night he was behaving really well. We were between the nasty malamute and a small Fox Terrier type dog named Sullivan. He never tried to eat the small dog, and was really good about heeling and listening.
We had just finished an out of motion stand and were told to stand directly in front of our dogs. I went to do this when a GSD named Zora came flying from out of nowhere. I didn't mention her in my last post but she belongs to an elderly woman and is in training at the kennel. Last class she basically decided she was done, I think she's 1.5yrs... maybe younger, she's definitely not fully grown yet and she was breaking her heel and running up to the trainer. You could really tell that this young dog was just checked out and just wanted to romp and play and be a goofball. Anyway, last night, she came flying over to Seppel. I grabbed his face because I don't trust him 100% to not eat another dog, he's actually been alright lately, but you never know. Zora proceeded to muzzle punch him and jump back and forth all over him, he handled this very well with his head in my hands, it was all so fast but slow at the same time. When I finally 'thought' about what was going on I went to try to grab the dog but she was too quick and about that time the assistant trainer, who was working with her, finally grabbed her. Sepp recovered quickly from the incident, thankfully. I had to take a few deep breaths myself because my adrenaline was pumping, his willingness to move forward and recover really made me proud.
The rest of the class went well. We got to try the 'drop on recall' which is where we put them in a stay, called them, and then told them to down. Sepp got it pretty well twice - this is something we have practiced in our Schutzhund training with a toy, so it wasn't a completely foreign exercise.
The homework for this week is to work on the stand out of motion and the drop on recall.
After the obedience portion we ended with our Agility, they got to go up an A frame as well as do a few jumps. Sepp has done most of the obstacles out there and he really seems to enjoy it. I'm going to look into doing an agility class - I think it would be fun to try, and fun to learn to do, not to mention I think it would be good mental work for him as well.
Not to get ridiculously squishy, but I really adore this dog.
As I have mentioned previously [at least I think I have!] I thought he had lymphoma before I got him. I was willing to take him because I wanted to treat the cancer and figured it would be a short comittment. Now I cannot imagine life without him. I remember thinking he would 'just be a dog' and would live out his days in my home as a tribute to his former owner, I never thought we would actually be attempting to try dog sport, I certainly never thought we would be trying agility, and as I have mentioned many times, I had never thought that we would be where we are today. I am so completely thankful and blessed to have this dog in my life.
No comments:
Post a Comment