Spur: Training the Beast, Part 13

Class Day 9, May 25


Our Private class with Sam (female) was held at the Pineville location at the same time as a Group Class was being held. Since Spur needs so much of this desensitization, I love that we have a chance to work with the extra people, dogs and distractions. It’s also such a help to have a trainer there with us to guide us when Spur gets out of hand.

We did the normal, walk around the entire Group Class while they’re practicing their activities. We walked down through the middle of the class when it was separated to two sides. Additional spectators were there (most likely also co-owners of the dogs in the Group Class, but sitting out while only one owner works with their dog.) We gave the spectators some of Spur’s food and treats and had them hold it out in a flat hand for Spur to take from them. Spur seemed to get pretty comfortable with these three spectators and continued to approach them to sniff them and see if they had more food/treats.

Probably one of the BEST activities we’ve done to date was Spur-in-the-Middle. LOL! It was similar to musical chairs for the Group Class. The class walked around a ring of place boards. When Courtney would call for them to put their dog in a sit, that’s what they had to do. Then, once the dogs were in their sit-stay, they (the owners/handlers) had to go put their foot on an empty place board. At the call of Courtney, they would call their dogs to them. All this was done with Spur, on a place board, in the center of the ring of place boards. Doug would have to keep Spur’s attention while the chaos of running, excited owners would come toward him to their place boards, and then as the dogs would also come running toward him. We did about 4 or 5 rounds of this exercise and Spur (and Doug) did an awesome job.

Homework for the week was to get at least 5 new people/strangers to throw food/treats at Spur. This would teach Spur that the sudden hand movement was not threatening, and that strangers offer good things/Yummies.