 “A dog can’t think that much about what he’s doing, he just does what feels right.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams  Once again we worked with Gracie and her problems walking. Because the clients cannot walk her due to her extreme pulling I was prepared for her to have forgotten everything she learned last week. I was right! But she got it back fairly quickly and walked very well during the last half of our session. The most progress she made was when she was other dogs. Last week she would pull to try to get to them, but tonight she would still be focused on them, but did not pull.
 “I knelt down and hugged the furry monster for a while. If it was too tight, Ghost didn't seem to mind. He wagged his tail and whined a little, sensing the hurt that I felt. Dogs are truly the best of companions. You don't need to explain. They know as much as they need to know, and they are loyal no matter what sins you've committed.”
― Jonathan Maberry, The King of Plagues  Gracie is such a bad puller that her owners can't walk her anymore. Because of that she gets basically no exercise. Not good for a 3 year old Border Collie/Lab mix. Tonight we worked exclusively on Loose Leash Walking, and she did very well. Hopefully in the next day or two I will have a video up that shows how she transformed in just 15 MINUTES!
 Tonight Milo learned two very versatile commands - Leave It and Wait. He picked them up very quickly. Leave It can be applied to food being dropped on the floor or anything on the ground that he shouldn't have, or to the play biting that he is displaying. Wait can be used to be patient for food, to prevent dashing out the door, or waiting at the top of the steps so as not to trip somebody.
 “Dogs are happy with few things because they have already observed man who is unhappy with many things!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan  I can always tell when the owners have put in the work the previous week. Tonight Milo displayed a very solid sit and down. He even did them on the hardwood floor, which he had trouble with last week. Kudos to the family. Milo is getting to that age when he is jumping up at visitors, and in the evening he gets the puppy crazies and jumps on the furniture, so tonight we taught him Off. We also worked on the beginning stages of his Recall.
P.S. This is not a picture of Milo, but he looks very similar. Maybe I need some kind of positive reward so I can remember to take pictures!  “This may be the primary purpose of dogs: to restore our sense of wonder and to help us maintain it, to make us consider that we should trust our intuition as they trust theirs and to help us realize that a thing known intuitively can be as real as anything known by material experience.”
― Dean Koontz  When Gracie's owners first contacted me they wanted to improve her obedience in the hope that she could become a service dog. Over the past few months her obedience has improved to the point where we can move on to assess whether she can, in fact, be a service dog. Tonight we took a road trip to Petco and the dog park to see how she interacts with strange people and dogs. She did well, but there is a long way to go to reach the goal.
 Began basic obedience tonight with Milo, a 3-month old German Shorthaired Pointer. When I arrived he was sound asleep in his crate and it took him a little while to get going, but once he did he did great. We worked on strengthening his response to his name and Sit, which he already knew, and taught him Down. That was a lot for one night for the little guy!
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AuthorJeff Dentler, CPDT-KA, IAABC-ADT, FFCP, CTDI Archives
September 2023
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