My Head Is About To Explode....Doodle Training Day!

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

I hardly know where to start. Today was our marathon training day with the two boys. It all started with Guinness's "Nose Class". My trainer gave me a "lecture" (and that's an understatement), because I continue to expect Guinness to comply with his obedience commands. She tells me I have to leave ANY expectations at the door. It's so hard...it's "hard wired" into my brain. So, he wanted to go "nuts" finding the designated scent, but he kept looking back at me for the okay. She says "He's not on a therapy visit...just let him be a DOG!". I need to keep practicing (and just letting go). Anyway, he still loves it (in spite of his "obedience obsessed" Mom). Today he found the "target scent" hidden among ten different boxes/baskets on the first try, and "sat" to let me know this was the "right" scent. He has a new friend in class who is another poodle mix who looks very similar to Guinness. He loves this dog, and he loves this dog's Mom even more. He would have gone home with her today in a flash. She brought the best treats he had ever tasted. She buys freeze dried turkey hearts from a local turkey farm...he truly thought he was in dogie heaven. He completely gave me the cold shoulder and followed her everywhere (I only had the Zukes mini treats...loser Mom that I am).
Okay, so then it was Murphy's turn. DH brought him up when Guinness's class was over. You all know that for the past couple of months Murph has been a real problem on walks....freaking out whenever he saw another dog...pulling and barking like crazy. I had to give up walking the two dogs together, because I couldn't control Murph with one hand. So we did a private lesson and "recreated" the event. We started with me walking the two boys around the training facility. They were perfect....no problems. The trainer was thinking, "so what's the issue". Then she brought in her very high drive "search and rescue Golden Retriever" while I was continuing to walk the boys. Well you guessed it...."all he... broke loose, and Murphy totally lost it. He "freaked out" and tried to "attack" Guinness because he couldn't get to the other dog. It was perfect...she really needed to see this. She quickly went to her car to get a training collar (choke chain collar) and put it on Murph. We then used the "Guinness Look Alike" dog to elicit a reaction. When Murph did not "heel" she gave a quick correction. She only had to do this twice. At that point she keep the training collar on him, but hooked the leash back to his regular collar, and we kept practicing with the little "Guinness look alike" as his distraction...no problem. Then she went out and again brought in her Golden. He was perfect, no pulling, great loose leash walking. That's when she said that this has been her experience with Doodles. She has done "board and train" with three different Doodles recently. Her experience has been that they will test and totally try to take over, but they learn very quickly. She's thinking that we may never need to use a correction collar again (and she doesn't want me using one myself anyway). We'll have to see, but I was pretty amazed today. If there's more problems, we'll do another "one on one" session.
The other huge learning for me today was about my own attitude toward Murphy. I always kid about him being the big, goofy Doodle. I think in my own mind I have been totally underestimating this guy. My trainer loved him, and was willing to put him right into her Therapy class with no Intermediate or CGC. She wouldn't do that for Guinness, because she didn't think he was ready. I have really not thought seriously about Murph as a Therapy Dog...she thought he was perfect. Anyway, I'm feeling pretty bad about this. She also pointed out to me that I treat Murphy different than I did Guinness. I let him get away with so much more. As we talked about it, I mentioned that I felt bad for him when he came to us because he had to leave his "first home", and I thought that must have been pretty hard for him...that may have carried forward. Well, it was time for another "lecture". As she put it..."Murph is living the sweet life", so get over any concerns you might have about his past...he has absolutely no clue about that now...HE'S A DOG! He's trying to redefine his position in the home right now (because he's a really "fresh" teenage boy), and this is the time I need to really understand that this guy is very smart (and manipulative), and he needs to be very clear on what's going "to fly" and what isn't. It was a huge learning day for the Doods and me. There's just so much to learn....I wonder if I'll ever really "get there".

[Suzann, Rosey & Bandit]

OMD that is some serious training, does she really use choke collars, no offense but that would scare me. R&B choke themselves enough on the regular collars!! But is sounds like you guys are off to some good obedience... We are doing classes too on Saturday but not quite to that measure. All the dogs in our class were so distracted by the squirrels in the park and rollin' in wild animal pee, that was our "natural distractions"

Better stock up on the freeze dried turky too!! LOL:) May the luck of the Irish be with you on your OB journey!

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

We treat Clancy much differently than Ned too. We just shrug our shoulders and make excuses for his misdeeds - wrong of us. We think of him as not nearly as bright. Truly both he and Ned are stubborn but in different ways. Ned evaluates whether it is worth his while to comply and Clancy just acts like he doesn't understand and refuses to comply. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.