Obedience Class With Ness and Lucy

Ness
















Lucy

Ness and Lucy

Welcome to my Blog. I've decided that my first blog topic would be about my first obedience class with my girls. First off, they are big-ish dogs, Ness is almost two and she comes in around 56 pounds. Then there is Lucy I adopted her about a month ago from the SPCA in Burnside and she's somewhere around 6 - 8 months, she comes in at 57 pounds. Yes she's a 60 pound puppy! Little back ground on them both.....It only took a couple of days for Ness to dig that Lucy was part of the family now. they have figured out that Ness is the dominant dog and Lucy has been coming around as the "enforcer". This works because Ness can be a trouble maker and gets pretty excited over the smallest things which winds Lucy up, but this also doesn't work for that reason.

This past Sunday was their first ever obedience class. Ness (the instigator/excitable one) walked into the place and lost her MIND! She wanted to play with the other dogs SO BAD! she was barking....that made Lucy bark the instructor was trying to teach the class no one could hear, No other dogs were going crazy...NONE. My dogs were like those bad kids in class that no one likes. They are usually pretty good we signed up for obedience class because that's one of the rules the SPCA has before you adopt from them, and I figured it would be good for Ness too. We didn't go because we had behaviour problems (which no one in the class would believe after their little show yesterday). The class is all about positive reinforcement, which means treats......lots....and ....lots of treats. They got so many treats yesterday, they stopped taking them, I assume they were full. Anyway, class ends and we're trying to leave the next class is coming in, Ness wants to play. I have my keys two clipboards my bag and Ness gets away from me, heads for a little black dog....I think it was black.....she wanted to play the little dog didn't. Now when you're in a class they teach you to stand in front of your dog to keep its attention on you. That's what the owner of the little black dog did, but, it kept me from getting to Ness because the woman kept stepping in my way. Then she turned around GLARING at me I'm talking killer dirty looks and tells me to get control of my dog.......I tell her sorry she got away from, this woman had a friend with her who also stepped in giving me dirty looks as my clipboards keys and bag go flying across the room. then a lovely woman tapped my shoulder and told me to follow her and she'd hold the door open for me, and then said its apparent some owners need lessons as well, that made me smile. So over to the truck Ness and I go, I get her, then go back for my stuff. There was a little girl with German Shepherd puppy who were beside us in the class, she picked up my things and brought them to me and told me not to stress over the woman with the little dog. Now you're wondering where Lucy was. I took Mom with me to work with Lucy, as the small dog started growling at Ness, Lucy comes bounding across the room dragging Mom behind her to play her "enforcer" role. The instructors got a hold of Lucy to stop her from getting involved. So Mom makes it outside with Lucy and the people from the class all went to talk to Mom, Mom said they were all very nice and understanding. So i managed to fill out my paper work and get home only to have Lucy get car sick in my brand new SUV. I was so embarrassed and stressed out I don't want to go back! But we already paid, that means we have to, so we'll work on the "Settle position," "sit," Learning their names, and look and HOPEFULLY Next week will be much less eventful. I'm still exhausted!