Weekly Training Update (Nov 6)

I took Lilly to class for the first time in seven weeks on Sunday. She did great, even though we did not know the majority of dogs and many of them were young and somewhat wild. She did snark at one dog whose self-control is still under construction, but that’s no surprise. This pup was straining at the end of the leash, hopping around and looking right at Lilly.

Lilly had a nice breakthrough moment when she hopped out of the car and immediately seemed calm in her Relaxation Protocol mode. She sat. I fed her treats. She seemed completely balanced with the first piece of food. Sometimes, we go through a bit of a Shark Phase, but not that day. She hopped out with a calm, confidence I was thrilled to see.

We arrived early and walked around a bunch, but as classmates began to arrive, we took up a position on a grassy median, with plenty of distance from the youngsters. (I fell instantly in love with the young GSP in class. What a handsome boy he is.)

{Doggone photos for this post got lost in a massive blog photo glitch. Sorry.}

As usual, we kept our buffer zone pretty big, except for the two dogs we knew, including Lucky (whose brown-and-white butt you can just see on the right).

Here you can see a happy Lilly waiting for classmates to complete an agility-dog-walk-like exercise on a raised ledge. We typically go first or last so that Lilly feels less pressure from the group.

We probably didn’t need quite this much space from our classmates, toward the end of the session, but Lilly is clearly content to hang out.

So, it was a nice experience. After being so cooped up from last week’s snow, Lilly was happy to get out and do something.