What has been the main focus of the day today?
In the morning we headed straight to a dog training school, to work with a lovely variety of dogs on a few basic behaviours.
The school has owners and their dogs sign up for courses that last a few weeks. They aim to teach some very useful life skills such as loose lead walking and recall.
How will this skill help your clients?
To work alongside your dog to teach them basic behaviours is a very useful thing for several reasons
- Training together helps to strengthen your bond, communication skills and understanding of one another
- Basic behaviours help with safety when out and about. For example you can learn to request and hold your dog’s attention when you need them to wait at the traffic lights to cross
- Learning basic behaviours sets a solid foundation for learning more complex things as training progresses
What have you enjoyed most about today?
With Victoria Stillwell’s help I learnt how to get the absolute focus of a very lively and strong puppy. With her guidance Teddy and I entered a great training zone and worked on a lot of behaviours on rotation – Sit, Down and Touch. It was like working with a different dog once Victoria showed me how best to manage him in a very positive way.
What has been the biggest challenge of the day?
Keeping our focus, energy and concentration going for 4 hours with many different dogs was challenging but rewarding.
As it was the last day of our intensive it was also sad to say goodbye to my fellow students when we all headed home. We are keeping in touch online throughout our studies, and I am looking forward to seeing them all again for our next intensive in October!
Image: Victoria Stilwell (4th from left), Christiana (wearing sunglasses) and fellow students on the last day.