Saturday, November 13, 2010

Training The Owner while Training the Dog.

For the past 4 weekends I have had the fortunate experience of taking my dog for the willing experience and purpose of training him. Luke, our dog is a year old Spaniel. He is lively and funky and has a really shaggy coat. He is full of energy and very disobedient. All these things have slowly been transforming in front of our eyes.

Our trainer, Jan, is extremely patient and experienced dog lover. I am still trying to figure out if he actually likes people or not. I say patient because we, the dog owners can be very slow to learn. Over these 4 weeks we have learnt how to get our dogs to sit; take food ; walk next to us on a lead and off a lead and how to stay them and down them. These may sound like easy things to do but they are incredibly taxing for an owner like myself with a wild and woolly crazy dog. Non the less, Luke can sit and walk fairly well on a lead and off it now and I am extremely proud of him.

Todays lesson felt like a counciling session. Jan informed me that my dog was feeding off my high energy. What??? Me high energy??? Heck, had not noticed. Perhaps he meant " feeding off my fast pace" anyway, I had a little chuckle. Wonder if the rest of my family "feed off my high energy"?

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