Category — Dog Training

Here are some photographs from the Sports Illustrated website of a few of the dogs rescued from Michael Vick’s property that were lucky enough to be place in family homes. These dog certainly do a lot to prove that there are no bad dogs, only bad dog owners.

PetSmart Charities offers some free webinar classes. Registration is also free. I haven’t attended one yet myself but hope to in the future. The times in November conflict with my schedule but the topics sound interesting: Infectious Diseases vs. Socialization… Playing the Odds and Stress, Burnout and Compassion Fatigue: Keeping the Balance for You and Your Agency. The second one sounds like it is applicable to nonprofits in a variety of social service organizations. If you attend one of these, please let me know what you think.

I tried something new on my walk today. I’ve been very strict lately, holding the leashes quite short and not allowing any kind of shenanigans from my girls. Today I decided to throw all that out the window and see what they would do without my constant reminders of the rules. If I were to grade them on their upholding of the rules without my guidance, I would grade as follows:

• Ginger B-
• Bonny B+
• Morgan F
• Addie C

Bonny was very good overall but she was walking ahead of me. She needed to stay by my side to get an “A”.

Ginger, considering how terrible a walker she was when I first got her, did fairly well. She also was walking ahead of me and occasionally pulled against the leash. I hate when dogs pull on the leash.

Morgan was an utter failure. So bad, in fact, that she only got to walk without my hand on her lease for twenty feet or so. She was pulling as hard as she could and chasing leaves and stopping to smell things. It was impossible for us to move as a group so I grabbed her lease and made her walk with me. She pulled the entire rest of the way. Admittedly she is the youngest of the pack, only eight or nine months old but that is not enough of an excuse. She really needs so individual attention to get her on track.

I was impressed with Addie. She hasn’t had any training. Not once did she pull on the leash. She did stop frequently to smell things but, as a beagle mix, resisting a smell is a great act of self-control. She needs training before she’ll have that skill mastered.

This exercise was good because it highlighted the main problem in my pack. Now I know where to concentrate my energies when I walk them.