Pam and Dublin go to class....

Dublin and I had a puppy training class in Boring, Oregon, at the Guide Dogs for the Blind campus. The classes were on Sat. the 26th, from 1pm to 4pm, we ended up getting done by 3:30pm.
This is how impressed Dublin was with the whole thing, LOL, he slept most of the time. The classes we had to take were, FIR, or Food induced recall, and Food protocol training.

There were a lot of people there! There was also another class block in the morning, but me not being a morning person, LOL opted for the afternoon class, it is about an hour drive for me down to Boring.

Dublin got to be a "Rock Star" LOL he got to do a demonstration for little puppys on the FIR concept, using food to get them to come at this age, basically, Dublin likes this game very much!

Call them and get them to come to you for the treat, bend down so they take the treat between your legs, so they are used to stopping there for future training.

This is a little blurry, Dublin gets all excited about food LOL, but he did very well, we have been working on the potty training protocol at home LOL and have done just a little of this so far, he is coming along very well. He looks so little in these pictures! At home he comes and sits when told pretty consistantly now. The down will be our next project.

Food, food, wheres the food! LOL FIR will really motivate this dog.

They had several older puppys and their handlers do the recall too. They start out on the 4' leash with the little ones and eventually depending on how fast they progress, the 6' and go to a 20' line, so that you can make sure when you give the "come" command they come, or you can reel them in with the line. They dont go off leash until they are very proficient at this.

For the Food protocol part of the class, yes they are two very different behaviors, we had to get up and practice our timing, when a tennis ball hit the floor we had to say "nice" to practice when to say it to the dog, so our timing with the behavior wanted was better. So far they are only using this type of training with problem behavior dogs, and dont want us to use it for the puppies yet. They do want us to be familiar with it, in case our puppy needs it in the future or they decide to add it to the puppy raiser program.

Our neighbor for the class, I dont remember his name, he wanted to play with Dublin so bad, LOL, and was so cute, he kept creeping closer and closer LOL.

And Dublin in his favorite pose for the afternoon. I was really happy with how he behaved, it was our first "down" outing, as he does not have all his shots yet and we dont want him to be down on the ground in a public place yet. Dublin pottyed on command "do your business" every time I took him out to go, and on the pavement! He was a very good puppy!

Thanks to our instructors, they did a very good job! Here they are demo-ing with another older puppy. The classes gave me a lot to think about and some things to practice and a really good feeling about Dublin, I think he really will be a "Rock Star" LOL he seems to have the mind for it, he is very calm and observes everything, meet and greets new dogs very politely, walked on the leash nice, we are still working on some pulling, but he is only 10 1/2 weeks old! All in all he is coming along very nicely. He actually slept 6 hours last night Woo Hoo! So that is coming along too.

Next puppy class with the club on Thursday, will have more pictures then!