Gah I can't even explain how excited I am. Theo is my nearly 10 year old beagle (his birthday is June 25th! We're officially in the month long count down!). He has absolutely no manners. My boyfriend agreed that he can come to live with us if he becomes a polite dog after training.
We're training through PetCo. I know that all PetCo trainers aren't reliable, but I really like ours! She's only been training professionally for one year, but she was telling me about all of her own dogs who she has self trained throughout the years (~10). She's VERY into positive reinforcement, absolutely no punishment or force is allowed. She was excited to meet my dog and was eager to learn about him. She's also been very prompt with phone calls, and she seems to really care about the individual needs of the dogs in the class. For example, she's only accepted two dog's into the class that Theo is in. The other dog is a german shepherd who can be dog reactive (excessive barking), so she wanted an older and calmer dog to pair him with (which would be Theo). She isn't going to accept any more dogs into the class, and she assured me that if the other dog scares Theo with his excessive barking, she will put the divider between us and work with us individually.
So with Theo we're going to work on...
-Basic obedience (sit, stay, come, down, etc.)
-Loose leash walking
-Being polite with food (i.e: not jumping for his dinner / trying to steal food out of people's hands). Also, we talked about the food aggression (he will growl if you try to take away a bone, or if you get too close to his food bowl while he's eating), and she said she would give me tips for this
-Separation anxiety and the barking that goes along with this
He starts June 12th! The course is only 6 weeks though so we'll probably have to sign him up for another. We have a lot to work on together.
.....Now, how do I get my boyfriend to agree to come too? He's currently not very interested, but the trainer and I agree that he should be involved in the process!
We're training through PetCo. I know that all PetCo trainers aren't reliable, but I really like ours! She's only been training professionally for one year, but she was telling me about all of her own dogs who she has self trained throughout the years (~10). She's VERY into positive reinforcement, absolutely no punishment or force is allowed. She was excited to meet my dog and was eager to learn about him. She's also been very prompt with phone calls, and she seems to really care about the individual needs of the dogs in the class. For example, she's only accepted two dog's into the class that Theo is in. The other dog is a german shepherd who can be dog reactive (excessive barking), so she wanted an older and calmer dog to pair him with (which would be Theo). She isn't going to accept any more dogs into the class, and she assured me that if the other dog scares Theo with his excessive barking, she will put the divider between us and work with us individually.
So with Theo we're going to work on...
-Basic obedience (sit, stay, come, down, etc.)
-Loose leash walking
-Being polite with food (i.e: not jumping for his dinner / trying to steal food out of people's hands). Also, we talked about the food aggression (he will growl if you try to take away a bone, or if you get too close to his food bowl while he's eating), and she said she would give me tips for this
-Separation anxiety and the barking that goes along with this
He starts June 12th! The course is only 6 weeks though so we'll probably have to sign him up for another. We have a lot to work on together.
.....Now, how do I get my boyfriend to agree to come too? He's currently not very interested, but the trainer and I agree that he should be involved in the process!