Moving Right Along

We moved into our new place last week so we modified our training.

We worked on down stays, place and have also transitioned Luke to sleep at the foot of Ara's bed.

So for the down stays, I put him in a day and told him to stay. Then we moved around the room moving boxes and such. I would reaffirm the stay with a verbal or hand signal stay if I saw he was getting antsy. After a little while I would walk over to him and give the "ok" to get up, with lots of "good boys" and pets. The next step was a down stay with the door open while we brought in boxes to the new place. For this I put his long lead on just in case, I also was only two steps a outside the door while hubby brought me boxes. This was a little tougher for him so I had to make a few "oops corrections" and put him back in his down stay. Again after a little while I walk back to him and give him the "ok" to get up.  I never call him out of a stay using "come" or "here" Stay should be a concrete command, were as "wait" or "hold" is a temporary type of command.

Place is a lot like long downs but I allow some movement of position and distraction. When I say "place" Luke is to go to his bed or his mat. He must stay on his place in a down, however he can shift around, or even chew on a chewy toy. He can not however leave the area of his bed or mat. I can also call him out of the "place" command. This is laying the ground work for when Ara and Luke go to school. For times like P.E. /Gym, Art, Music ect where he may not be able to be right next to her but still needs to be near enough to her to help if she needs him or calls him.

Luke is now sleeping in Ara's bed. He has picked up all on his own that he is to stay on her bed during the night. He will also not get down until she gets out of bed. Every morning when she wakes up Luke smells her face and gives her a kiss. She sleeps much better with Luke there, so far she wakes up less during the night and settles in to sleep easier, which makes for better mornings and days.

Class was a lot of fun this week, due to two new dogs that joined class. Luke did much better about not barking when the other dogs barked. We worked on "stand" , "stays", "heel",  distractions, recalls, "sit", "down" and then we stayed after to have play time with another poodle and poodle mix. Luke had a lot of fun and so did I.