A while back I mentioned that Maddie and I were going to repeat our intermediate obedience class as a refresher. Yesterday was our second week and things are going just great - Maddie is a superstar. Her sit-stay, down-stay, stand-stay, heel, wait, recall and finish are all rock solid. Anything messed up is certainly my fault because Madness sincerely wants to do the right thing.
Next week we are going to learn to teach "go to your rug", so I'll be off to Target today to get Maddie a rug. I think this will be a great thing for her to know around Nora. In fact, I think I'll get a pretty Maddie rug for Nora's room too.
One comment that our instructor made yesterday has really stuck with me. I don't remember her exact words, but the gist was that dog training is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you constantly worry that your dog is going to screw up, he'll probably screw up, but if you have confidence and believe in him, he'll do great. It is so true, I worried a lot with our first dog and he was a wild thing (gorgeous and sweet, but also quite naughty). I could have been a better dog mama to him. My attitude with Maddie is different - I view her as a fundamentally good dog who needs me to teach her. It makes a world of difference.
Update:
We got two rugs for Maddie at Target - a bright green one for Nora's room and a tan one for other places in the house. I'm not sure yet how to teach her to go to her rug and I don't want to do anything that might undermine what we're going to learn next week, but I did decide that associating good things with the rugs was an ok thing to start on now, so I gave Maddie her new bone on the rugs. She seems to have decided that she prefers the green one (that's my girl!).
1 comment:
I found your posting searching at google and am quite interested reading the article. I have bookmarked your blog and will keep visiting your blog new post. Thank you for posting such wonderfull information about Dog Training. Thank you again.
Post a Comment