Friday Night Shopping

 I took him out to a few stores tonight, mostly in and out quick stops. I took my mom along with me to help with a few things.

First I have to say that all the stores were really great, the staff was polite and interested in what we were doing. They even told us to please come back any time to train :)

What we worked on - Heeling, Loose Leash walking, sit, down, stays, no barking, distractions and greetings.

Heeling and Loose Leash- Luke's heeling is getting better as far as stopping, standing and turning go. He does an automatic stand when we stop (no a sit as is traditional) he held is stand for a long period of time. When I notice he was getting tired of standing (he is only a puppy still) I gave him the "relax" command so he could sit or down if he wanted to. He pulled on the leash way more today, in the last two weeks we have not had much time for practicing loose leash walking, so now that we are mostly unpacked and situated we can begin again on this.

Sit, Down and Stays - His sits and downs where very good, I only had to give it once and/or do the hand signal. His stays were a bit harder for him due to the amount of distractions. However by the end of the first store he was able to hold a "stay".

No Barking - We had some excitement barking in the parking lot and twice in the first store. After the first ones with a correction. He did not bark for the rest of the outing.

Distractions - boy where there a lot of distractions for him tonight. Carts, a man sweeping, children running around him , plus all the smells in the craft store. He did pull toward the kids and want to greet people while we were walking, I know this is something that will come with time as we work on walking in crowds. He did excellent walking near carts, behind them, in front of them and in a down stay as one went around him. The children running was the hardest for him, but I just put him back in his sit stay until he got it.

Greetings - At the end of the first and last trip I let him greet some of the cashiers since they were in retail uniforms. The first store he forgot his manners and had to be reminded at the last store he did much better with staying seated while being petted.

Oh one last thing we worked on was my mom holding his leash while he was in a "wait" while I went out of sight for a few minutes. This is something they will test for on the AKC Canine Good Citizen test. My mom held his leash and I put him in a sit and told him "wait". Wait means basically that wait until the next command, wait is also a reassurance of the fact that I will be giving another command and am not done.  He did really great, I walked out of sight and he did not panic or whine. He also did a very polite greet with me when I came back :)

All in all these were good outings, he loves putting on his vest and going out and with every outing we go on I can better assess what we need to work on and where he is in training.