Today was Sasha’s first day of doggie school. We’re going to Triple Crown Dog Academy, which is the best school in the area.

I’m pretty impressed with the facility and our trainer, Abel. Looks like they run a good ship, and Abel has the knowledge and experience. He’s never worked with a Kuvasz before, but he was reading up on them before we arrived.

We started out with me being interviewed about our situation, what we wanted out of training, and so on. We then took Sasha out of the car and brought her over to the potty area. Abel observed and as expected Sasha was excited and nervous and reacted as such. We switched her collar to one of their StarMark collars, and boy, that made a difference. She was MUCH more responsive to corrections.

We worked on basics of walking on a loose leash and “sit”. How to work in correction, how to work in praise. The interesting thing? Some of the immediate “how do we deal with these problem situations?” are going to be addressable by this. For instance, when sitting, dog should sit, quietly, waiting for us to “free” them; distractions shouldn’t distract, they are to do nothing but sit (if you will). So let’s say there’s something outside she doesn’t like and she runs up to the window and starts barking. I don’t mind if she alerts us to the situation, so that bark is OK, but continued barking? No go. But do we need to issue other commands, like “quiet”? Well, perhaps later, but not right now. Right now we just work to distract and have her work on “sit”, since that works out the “be quiet” part as well. Of course, we must be a human Pez dispenser with the treats to keep the positive reinforcement going. But for now for the next week, this is where we want to go. Also our walks and teaching her how to walk on a loose leash help out with distractions, keeping focused, and so on.

By the end of the hour? She was approaching Abel and ate out of his hand but then something spooked her and she barked and ran back to Momma. But it was a big change from how she was an hour prior. Furthermore, she was getting pretty good at keeping a watch on us as we walked; able to go further and further without problem.

So, the trainer felt the progress was good. We were all pleased with the results. Yes again we’re behind the curve so there’s work to be done. But so far, so good.

We’ll continue doing private lessons like this for a few weeks, working on the basic obedience and manners. Once she’s got things down, we’ll continue to up the ante, further training, group classes, and so on.

I’m just happy to see progress, both in her, and in us.