Mississippi is frustrated this week. She’s been home with me since Monday morning and she’s going a bit stir crazy. We went to class last night and she wanted no part in it. I realized that class just isn’t going to work out. My beliefs about training are too different from the teachers and Mississippi doesn’t have any fun at all. If she’s not having fun, she’s not learning and I’m miserable trying to cheer her up and motivate her the whole time. The clincher was an aggressive dog in class last night. I don’t know what the hell it was doing there in the first place. Last night was the first time it’s been in our class. All during class it kept lunging at other dogs. This is supposed to be an advanced obedience class and this dog is trying to rip open the throats of any dog that comes near her. Mississippi did pretty well just ignoring the dog but towards the end of class things got ugly. We were practicing our sit stays and Mississippi decided the quickest route between point A and B was the open door to the left of us. The teacher had propped it open just before we started our sit stay practice. As I went to grab her leash, she got too close to kujo and the dog went for her. She kept backing up but the dog kept coming at her. I was finally able to get her out of there. 10 seconds later the teacher was telling us to get into another down position. Mississippi and I were both very shaken up and I decided Mississippi had the right idea. We headed straight for the door and I don’t intend to go back. It was nice getting to go on walks with other dogs, I’m sad we’re loosing that, but I am just worried the class is too frustrating for her and we are loosing our relationship over it. When I go on walks with her outside of class, she sits at corners without asking. In class she wasn’t sitting for nothing.
So, my quest is to get her into a fun, fast paced group class. Fun being the operative word here.
If last night wasn’t stressful enough, Mississippi found a cat in her yard today. It was ugly. She is so hard to grab hold of and the cat was having trouble finding an escape route. Mississippi got paw smacked and the cat finally got enough of a leap to get over the fence. I could really use some quiet time, I wish Mississippi thought the same.
It was been wonderful and terrible having her here all week. She spends part of her day just wanting to be near me and part of her day trying to deconstruct the house. This morning it was the bathroom rub. She is so responsive to our little agility training in the back yard and as long as I keep her occupied she is an angel. But there is much work to do and I feel bad that she has to spend so much of the day just moping. We’ll have to take her to the big dog park this weekend so she can have some proper doggy fun.
On a happy note, it was great fun introducing Mississippi to the sprinkler. She was terrified at first, hiding behind me and getting all jumpy. She eventually got up the nerve to approach it and had fun biting the streams of water. Since she doesn’t show much interest in her baby pool, this will be a fun way to get her to cool off. I think she thinks the water beads are like flying bugs, and catching bugs is one of her favorite past-times.
I just set up a five week class with Happy Go Lucky in an “Out and About” class. Sounds like it’s much more up Mississippi’s alley. Back to reward training! Sorry for the experiment Mississippi. I just assumed all modern day dog training was reward based. I should have known better with all those Caesars out there. I gave it a good go with the community class, back to the treats! Yay! I’m so excited to start training again.