Things have been a little busy in the household, so I have
been a little behind in keeping everyone up to date on Bree.
She has been a very busy girl! When we first brought her home,
we immediately enrolled her in puppy classes with the Dog
Obedience Group (D.O.G. for short!). All of our vizslas have
gone through classes with them. Their focus is on positive
reinforcement, operant conditioning, clicker training and
overall just having fun with your dog.
Bree was a great student! She has a wonderful work ethic
that has made training her so easy. She already came home
with a perfect sit and incredible eye contact (thanks, Karen!)
so I didn't need to spend too much time on that. We worked
on downs (because Aunt Rainey does not like to down, we
REALLY worked on it so now it's Bree's default position!),
recalls, walking loosely on leash, puppy massage, how to
work through distractions as well as had good old puppy playtime!
Here is Bree (in her "sunny" yellow collar) showing off
her eye contact while sitting with her friends
Diamond the Vizsla and Amos the Border Terrier.
On February 8th we had puppy graduation where we got to show
off all that we had learned over the past several weeks. We also
got to do a trick. Some of the other students did high fives,
rolling over and playing dead. I decided to teach her a trick that
would be useful for us in agility down the line. With a command
of "go to your mat" she would run from several feet away to
her mat, lie down and put her head down. I have a feeling she
is going to have a better table performance in agility than
Rainey ever did. It was really cute!
Our graduating class.
D.O.G. also offered participation in AKC's new S.T.A.R. Puppy
Program. S.T.A.R. stands for:
Socialization
Training
Activity
Responsibility
It's a new program designed to get dog owners and puppies off
to a good start. They are "tested" on many of the things that
we went over on class. It's a very natural lead to the Canine
Good Citizen test.
You can read more about AKC's S.T.A.R. Puppy Program at:
http://www.akc.org/starpuppy/
Our class had four S.T.A.R. Puppy graduates:
The Vizslas Diamond & Bree, Whitney the Boston
Terrier and Shaina the Shephard.
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