Boof passed her dog training!

Boof took a five week dog training class through My K9 Tutor at Advanced Boarding and Grooming in Delaware and just completed her course.  She did SO well!  She took the class with her friends, Nash, Mason, and Roxie and two other dogs.  They all started off as hot messes at the first class and they made huge improvements by today’s testing class.  I’ve been telling her for days not to embarrass us, but I also have to admit that we didn’t even work with her all that much so it totally would have been our fault.  But she didn’t embarrass us!

We took her to work on her leash walking skills mainly.  She used to pull on her lease and zig zag back in forth in front of our legs and was constantly stopping to sniff whatever she wanted.  She also got into the habit of getting mad when you didn’t go the direction that she wanted and would just sit down on the sidewalk and refuse to walk.  It would make me so mad because you can’t just drag her on the lease because she is 30 lbs of large-ness and since her neck is bigger than her head, her whole harness can pull off of her.  This has led me on occasion to have to pick up her 30 lbs of large-ness and carry her for 1/2 a block or so until she would finally walk again.  Seriously.  One time I was walking her in my longer, nice coat and when I bent down to pick her up because she was acting like a jerk, it busted my zipper.  I was so furious and frustrated with her.  And I’ve been wearing my coat all winter by just closing the toggles buttons, which makes it much less warm.

I’ll be honest that I had little hope that she would ever be a great walker.  She’s part beagle, so she has to sniff everything, and the other part is pug, so she’s stubborn.  I have to admit that she walks so much better after just 5 classes.  She actually heels (walks nicely at your heel) for most of her walks now, she can auto sit (sit down automatically when you stop walking), stay (which she already did before), and lay down with just a command and arm signal.  It’s like walking a whole new dog.  She’s been able to lay down for awhile, but only for a treat and only when we were facing her.  Actually she could do a lot of tricks (sit, shake, high five, lay down) but she only consistently would do them for treats.  Now she listens to us much better for all things and walking her isn’t a pain in the ass (except that it’s always freezing still).

We’ve never had to train dogs before, so we had no idea where to begin to fix her walking behavior.  The class was totally worth the money and we may eventually take her to the K9 102 class once she really has all of these skills mastered.  If you’re in Columbus and you’re interested in taking your dog to training, Tiffany is a great instructor at My K9 Tutor and she can even do private or in home training if you have specialized issues that need addressed.