my dog has class

...or so the petsmart bumper sticker (magnet) says. Saturday afternoon we met Carey, the petsmart trainer for a lesson. We are working with her on Vi's issues of overstimulation and melodrama. When we got there, Vi was all wound up. She wanted to play and there is a big bucket of toys that Carey keeps. So Vi was rooting in the toys and lifting up the lid. She pulled out a dog stuffie with squeaky feet. He had been previously eviscerated, so we didn't have to worry about that happening, and he was easily re-stuffable. She pulled out a cat with crinklies inside. She pulled out a faux-lambskin thing that was on the end of a long rope. Then she got sick of sticking her nose under the lid every time and flipped it back entirely. Carey said this was very smart. I thought, "That's my girl," but not really, as Vi is good at getting what she wants. Then she climbed up on the edge of the container and perused the bounty. Since she was being playful, Carey suggested that we use that to our advantage. So she walked around outside the enclosure with the dog tags and her dog Wyatt. She shook the dog tags and Wyatt provided the authentic doggy smell (not that he's a smelly boy!). Every time the tags jingled and Violet looked and subsequently lost interest she got to play with the stuffie.

This is Violet and Carey at beginning Obedience graduation

Next, I took Violet to the far back corner of the store, and practiced having her sit and ideally down (riiight, not at Petsmart!). Then Carey walked Wyatt across the center aisle. Well, that was not within our threshold. So next she took him down to the far end of our aisle. It was a wide aisle with many display items set in the middle. The idea was that they would only reveal a brief flash of Wyatt, which would be less stimulus than before. Plus, he'd be farther away. We worked on this for a bit, and eventually they were working in the aisle instead of just passing across. After a while Violet decided this was getting rather dull and that her luck with Wyatt was up afterall, so she decided to lay down and have a little rest. Carey declared that a good place to stop. More next week, sorry so late in getting to this!