Second session of the Advance class and we are definitely learning new things.

Heel work

First we started with some heel work, walking dog to dog.

Artemis wasn’t great at this. Previously there were horses in this field so the smells were quite distracting for her. And also this Advance class is earlier in the morning, so she has more energy and gets easily distracted.

Stay

And then we practised stay. Artemis was ok, but not amazing, because she was distracted by the goats in the other field – so many distractions today.

Hold and give

So this is a new trick. What you’re meant to do is: start your dog in the heel position, ask your dog to wait, throw an item for the dog to retrieve.

Then ask your dog to hold, and they will run over to pick up and hold the item. Then ask your dog to give, and they will run back to you and drop it in front of you whilst in the sit position.

I watched the other dogs and it was really interesting. Some dogs didn’t bring the item back to the owner and just went running around the field with the item in their mouth.

And one dog hilariously came back to their owner, dropped the item, and went to hold another dog’s retrieve item and wouldn’t give it back! So for the rest of the class this dog just had another dog’s retrieve item.

This was Artemis’ first time, so instead I was given a tube to hold so it would smell of me, and then ask Artemis to hold the tube in the mouth with the command “hold”.

Then to release the tube, I asked Artemis to “give”. Artemis did not want to give! The trainer advised not to pull the tube out of her mouth, instead to put my fingers in her mouth and squeeze so that she releases the tube herself.

I informed the trainer that Artemis does sometimes resource guard and the shelter advised to trade. The trainer responded that when I’m squeezing Artemis’ mouth, this is to allow her to give the item to me, and that this is not taking the tube away from her.

“A” recall

Finally, we practise A recall. This is where you ask your dog to wait, then walk a little away, and ask your dog to heel whilst continuing walking and the dog continues to walk to heel with you.

As this was Artemis’ first time, I put her in the heel position, asked her to wait, then walked to the end of the long lead and asked her to heel whilst continuing walking straight and she followed me and then was walking with me in the heel position.

The next step would be to walk in various directions and not just straight.

Conclusion

Learning lots of interesting new things. The hold and give tricks might be a little tricky so we’re going to have to practice that. I’m reassured that this won’t increase her resource guarding.

The A recall would be easier to practise though!