sometimes I'm neither all that bright nor observant

[smg01]

There are a couple of other people of other people with dogs in my complex area. Well, there are lots of dogs in the area, but Tom and I frequently run into Duncan and his mom and Edison and his dad in the late evening when we're out. Last night the three dogs were playing with each other. (This involves a lot of leash tangling and feeling like one is a maypole. None of us feel like our dogs are reliable off-leash, and sadly there's not a fenced in area on the grounds.)

Anyway, at one point Tom sort of disengaged from them. Then he went into an alert sit, looking at me while I scritched around his ears.

Edison's dad: "He really pays attention to you."
Me: "Sometimes."
Edison's dad: "No," [he points at the other dogs] "there are all these distractions and he's looking right at you."
Me: "Oh." [said with dawning realization]

What kind of idiot needs someone else to point out that their dog is bonding to them? Me. In the midst of my anxiety about barking issues, and feeling inadequate and not quite sure whether my dog and I are attaching as we should, it took a relative stranger to observe to me that Tom was looking at me in pretty much the way that we want our dogs to look at us. In all my self-flagellating over stuff that I might be doing wrong, I failed to notice a couple of cues/body language. I guess because my not-quite-ten-month-old dog isn't behaving perfectly after one month? Good grief. Clearly I need to step back and take a couple of breaths.

And just for the record (or myself) a couple of other notes about things going pretty well training-wise. He does extremely well with "sit." It's his most reliable command. He does pretty well with "down." He obeys "off" and "leave it" when it suits him. And much to my surprise, he's caught on to "stay" almost from the first time that I tried to teach it. I expected that to need to work with a partner to even get the concept across. I also met with someone this afternoon who showed me a technique for leash training that doesn't involve jerking-the-leash corrections. It'll require time, patience, and persistence, but it already seems very promising. So, I remind myself, in the midst of frustrations--and I'm sure there will be plenty to come--there are also things going right.

Comments

[rainbow.livejournal.com]

oh YAY tom and suzanne!!!

[jungleeyedgirl.livejournal.com]

Relampago responded to the command "What do you do?" when being asked to sit. It was freaky.

[rgreeneyes.livejournal.com]

aaahhhhhh, so glad that he loves you so much already.

I tend to tell me dogs when they ignore me that I know they are smarter than they are acting. Seems they understand that because after that they tend to do what they are told. lol
good luck with the training.