Intermediate Graduation

Of the three students in this session of Intermediate classes, Guinness was the only one to show up for the final exam. We went through all the paces and he did OK. Well, he was too goofy and excited to concentrate, so the first time for some exercises were flops. We went through our paces of waiting at the front door to the store, walking slow, fast, to the left then right, and doing a sit/stay, down/stay, and stand/stay.

Another task to accomplish is for the dog to obey the commands sit, down, and come while the owner is barking the commands from ten feet away without holding a leash. Guinness is capable of doing that, but that is not how our teacher performs this maneuver. For the past several weeks, she takes the dog to one end of a long aisle in the store with her holding the dog on a 40 foot lead. The owner is to stand 40 to 50 feet away and command the dog, “sit,” followed by “down,” then “come.” As if that is not difficult enough, she throws some treats in the middle of the path. We are to tell the dog, “Leave it” while they are bounding to us.

There are several problems with this. First, if the dogs do not want to sit or go down when we dictate to them from afar, there is absolutely no way to correct them to encourage them to obey. We have done this repeatedly week after week with the same result. Eventually, the dogs might obey after repetitive tries. It is entirely frustrating for the owner to stand there helplessly begging the dog to respond.

The second issue is that Guinness is a large dog with long legs and can run very fast. His two classmates are tiny dogs – a Yorkie and a pug. It takes them a long time to run from the teacher to their owner 40 feet away. The owner has time to note if they are going to be distracted by the treats or not and command them to “leave it” if necessary. Guinness moves quickly enough that, if I tell him “leave it” before he sees the treats, that clues him to search for a forbidden item. Once he sees the treats, it is all over, because I cannot yell “leave it” quickly enough nor is there any way to correct him when he does eat the treats. One night, a customer walked past during this ridiculous scene and commented, “You call this dog training?”

However, once Guinness is down, when the come call is uttered, he bounds towards me, devours the treats, and sits at my feet. The next step, after the dog is sitting in front of the owner, is to tell the dog to stay while the owner walks down an intersecting aisle out of sight. After a few seconds, the owner calls the dog to come again. Guinness almost always succeeds.

For the finish, a throw rug is in the center aisle, and the owner is to tell their dog, “Go to your bed,” then “Lie down.” We have fair success with those commands.

There has been no improvement in response to this useless and unrequired ordeal. Of course, it is an ultimate goal to have your dog obey from a distance, but you cannot teach them without corrections if they choose not to obey readily upon command. Guinness learned that there is no consequence if he doesn’t listen to me, thus delaying our goal of teaching him to come on command.

Despite this negative of the class, the teacher is sweet, knowledgable, loves the dogs, and loves her job. I cannot say these things about the “professional” teachers!

He did receive his diploma, but I felt like it was a gift. This was the opposite of the exam at the "professional" school. There he legitimately earned his diploma but was denied it for no obvious reason.