Ole day14

This morning I had a class to teach in University City. Abner is out of town until tomorrow so I decided to bring all 3 dogs to class and set them up in an exercise pen while teaching. It really is helpful having an older dog to mentor a puppy. As soon as I put Ole in the ex-pen with Shelly , he settled right down and followed her example of quiet calmness. It was nice. Donna, my long time assistant and best friend came and brought Ginger to help assist in the class. It was the first class ,one of 4 that will meet over the next 5 weeks. It is called Perfect the Basics and in it we do just that. It is basically an intermediate obedience class. We worked on leash work sits and downs, and speeding up the downs and some attention work. Toward the end of the class, I got Ole out to practice sit and down stay with the class and as we were wrapping it all up Elmo had gotten hold of a stuffed bone that I had in the training bag. Ole tried to take it away from him and things,,,GOT... UGHLY! I couldn't interfere at that point as Elmo needed to back Ole off. He did, and now I know that I'm going to be working a lot with the two of them on turn away , leave it , and go to your place. I will do this separately and then together. If I don't, there will be big problems for Elmo in the near future. I explained what had happened to the class and also explained that it would not be a good idea to just let them work it out on their own as someone will get hurt. I have to get leadership over this quickly so that it stops.
After class, we headed home where after I restrained and brushed all three dogs, I did some off training with Ole from the hand , the floor , both inside and outside. Dogs don't generalize learning well, so anything they are taught must be practiced in a wide variety of locations and circumstances in order for them to understand it. Tomorrow we will begin turn away training. Ole had his lunch and I put him in his crate. He fell right asleep and stayed quietly in his crate for 2 hours! That was a break through. I've taken my time crate training him as I want it to be a place he likes to spend time not associated with being left behind. Anyway , I am taking my time with it as it is important that it have no bad connotations. I started putting together the ingredients for a pot roast for dinner and realized that I was missing several things, so i packed the dogs into the car and drove over to the grocery store. After shopping I got them out of the car and we rode up and down the elevator several times and then did the same with the outdoor elevator. Elmo and Ole seemed to enjoy the experience but Shelly was a tad nervous about it. Several people wanted to know if I was training them to be service dogs and I told them that I train all my dogs as if they were service dogs. Dogs that have enriched lives with many life experiences are more adaptable , have better bounce back, and are far less likely to have problems with people and other animals.
After dinner , We went for a walk over to a floating dock at a small marina near my house. The ramp that leads down to the dock moves as you walk on it so i thought that it would be another new experience for Ole. No problem, he enjoyed itbut seemed to want to jump into the water. I wasn't up for that so we walked around the park observing groups of people picnicking and stopped to watch some young college age kids who had stretched a tight rope between two trees about 3 feet off the ground. They were walking across it ( one at a time) or at least trying to. Ole was fascinated and just sat watching them. After that it was back to the house and time for chewies. Abner will be home tomorrow afternoon, yea!