Cedarwoods

Last Thursday night I started an eight week basic obedience training course with Lucky at Cedarwoods. I was a little leery at first because it uses a training collar and is not treat based. I took a treat based course with Barley when he was a puppy but I really didnt think Lucky would be that into it. She is not at all interested in food like Barley was. At first I thought we were going to have to get one of those collars with the spikes in it and I wasn't so sure about that but it turns out it's just a chain that "chokes" if she does something wrong. I have been practicing with her morning and night for 2-5 minutes like the instructor said to with a walk (sporadically) during the day. The first couple times she seemed to get what was going on but all weekend she didnt care if she was "choked" or not. She was jumping up on me during the training session too. The instructor (Ron) said we could call anytime and ask for advice. So I called yesterday and told him what was going on and he said why dont you come on out tomorrow. Since Jon didnt get to go with me on Thursday night, he stayed home with the girls, he met us out there to see what we were doing wrong and to get some help. And guess what...Lucky is a suck up! She did everything she was suppose to do. No jumping, turning when she was suppose to and heeling for part of the walk and while I was standing there talking to him. Isn't that always the case?! We have 7 more weeks and they guarantee she'll be able to heel on lead, do a figure 8 plus one minute sit and a 3 minute lie down in just 8 weeks or we can take the class over again for free! For being in the pound for 2 months of her 8 month life she is a little skittish and loves to bark too. I just want her to be able to come when called. She has gotten out of the yard a couple of times and she runs like a gazelle, she is fast and can jump so high! Her favorite thing is to run over to the renters place and bark at their door and they sure dont like that. She also loves to go outside and just bark, thankfully she doesnt like to bark in the house!! It's like having another baby in the house...