Sadie's first class.

Recently I have been writing about training Sadie to pull either a skier or other object. I think that she is on track to make exercise a daily part of her routine. Now its time to address Sadie's other issues. In this case I am talking about Socialization. She has had no problems adapting to Me, my family or the other dogs but after her LER (Litter Evaluation) the breeder had some concerns about her flight and fight drive. Because of Sadie's LER I had some advanced warning and was aware of what to look for so that it could be corrected as soon as possible.

Even though I was told that Sadie had a Hard temperament I have seen no signs of aggression other than normal puppy attitude. However, I did notice that she would back away from strangers. Strange objects were no problem, she would stand her ground and investigate anything however she would back away from strangers and occasionally bark at them. This is one activity that has to be stopped as soon a possible. I knew that the answer to the problem was socialization but because of my lifestyle this would take some extra effort on my part. Even though I take her to pet stores with me and take her along when I meet with clients and their dogs it was just not enough so I decided to take her to a puppy class where she would be handled by one stranger after another.

Before I moved here about 30 years ago I lived in Canton Ohio and was one of the instructors and a member of the board at a Training Club there. They have since built a new building and moved to a new location that is about 45 minutes away from me. I decided to take Sadie there and put her in a puppy class because I knew that part of the class included sitting on the floor in a circle with about 10 other people and their dogs and passing the dogs around the circle. This is exactly what Sadie needed but trying to fit another evening out with the dogs into my schedule would be a problem. I managed to rearrange my clients training schedule so that I could have Thursday night free to attend the class.

I drove down with Storm and Sadie for a visit and found that the class was 6 weeks long and I arrived on week 4. I talked them in to letting me come into the class in the middle and while I was at it I enrolled Storm in the advanced class that was after this one. He loves to work and I figured that since I had to make the trip anyway I may as well use the opportunity to work Storm around the other dogs as well.

The class started with everyone sitting in a chair with their dog beside them around the out side of the ring. Well I should say Sadie was sitting beside me, the others were jumping all over the place. Keep in mind that these dogs have had 3 weeks of training. The first exercise was getting the dogs attention. The way they teach this is to put a treat in the dogs face then bring it up to their mouth so that the dog looks at them. I forgot to mention that each of the handlers had a little bag of treats strapped to their waist because they used treats to train these dogs, which I do not believe in and which was one of the reasons I left the club 30 years ago when their training started getting more politically correct and less and less effective every week. They went around the room one at a time and ask them to get their dogs attention. Everyone with the exception of Sadie required a treat stuffed in their face and then slowly moved up to the owners mouth to get the dog to look at them. Some did not even respond to that. When it was my turn I looked down at Sadie said her name and she looked up at me. No treat just a word of praise when she responded. I could not have used a treat if I wanted to because I do not carry them with me.

The next exercise was the one that I brought her for. Everyone split in 2 groups and sat in a circle on the floor. Once seated we were instructed to pass our dog to the person on our right. Well, Sadie wanted no part of this she was bound and determined not to leave my side. This would normally be fine with me because I have no problem with a dog that would rather be with me than with someone else unless, they do not want to be with someone else out of fear, this I can not abide and I had a feeling that fear was part of the reason Sadie did not want to leave me. I also did not want to traumatize her and force her to be passed around a bunch of strangers. I opted to get up and walk her around to each person and let them hold and touch her. She was all right with this so we both went around to each person in turn and had them hug, pet and talk to her. She look at me a number of times for reassurance but accepted the attention without a problem.

During the trip around the circle I helped a couple of the owners fit their collars properly and in one case reversed a choker that was on backwards. The owners probably thought who does he think he is, he comes in her 3 weeks late and tells me what I did wrong. If they only knew how hard it was for me to sit there and see all the mistakes and do nothing they would understand. I wanted so badly to stand-up and say all right everyone get up and we will straighten these puppies out in about 10 minutes. What they teach in this 6 week class I teach in the first night of a private lesson.

Let me interrupt here to get up on my soap box for just a moment. I am not saying that I am a better trainer than the instructors there but its more of a comment on what happens to organizations like these. Years and years ago clubs like these were started with very good intentions, in this case to help people train there dogs. The founders had a vision and a talent that they passed on to their members. They refined there techniques until they were able to produce very obedient dogs that performed at the top of their game. When I was an instructor here I remember graduating classes where half of the members competed in obedience trials and all of them scored in the 190's. Today they are lucky to get one in a hundred that competes and then they are satisfied to qualify and will never see scores in the 190's. So what happened? What happened was no one was willing to stand up for what they knew to be right and they gave in to one or two outspoken individuals that complained about the techniques used. The club became "Politically Correct" resulting in watered down training techniques and the loss of good trainers that got frustrated with the new methods. It was during this period that my mentor and I left the club and started our own. This was also where I learned that you could get paid for what I had been doing for free for a number of years. A few years later I moved further away and we parted ways because we could not agree on the financial end of the business. Now that I am older I regret letting money come between friends.

The club continued on and over time the new members lowered their expectations and their dogs performance showed it. Soon new members were quitting because of it. Their solution was to shorten the classes and add more classes to the schedule. This increased the number of new members and help compensate for the increased turnover. Classes were shortened from 10 weeks to 6 weeks and training nights went from one night a week with 3 classes (Beginner, Novice and Open) to classes 5 nights a week with 4 classes (Puppy, Beginner, Pre-Novice, Novice). Basically what they did is replace Beginner and Novice with 4 classes, this increased the time to get through Novice from 20 weeks to 24 weeks. Then because more and more people lost interest they dropped Open and replaced it with a night of run troughs for the one in a hundred that continued on their own. They found that even with more classes more and more people were failing to accomplish what was required for the next class so they started recommending that they repeat classes. Now by the time they get through Novice some of them have been training for over a year and are still not as proficient as my clients that get 4 weeks of training. What a waist of a dogs short life.

All right I will get off my soap box now and get back to Sadie's first class.

Next time Walking on loose lead and Recall