10 minute adjustment period

[JennieWI]

Gunther has one class left in Obedience training appicon. The class is held in a room with five or six other dogs and their owners, each dog working on a different assignment depending on where they are in the class schedule. The instructor always made note that Gunther needs 10 minutes upon entering the room before he settles down and that should NOT be necessary . He wants to see Gunther enter the room calmly and sit as if he is bored. That is not Gunther's personality, though. The fact that Gunther attemps to keep his butt on the floor with all his wiggling and nub wagging is doing pretty good or so I thought. I don't know if this is possible (what the instructor expects Gunther to do). I'm wondering if anyone has a technique/method they know of that teaches a dog to be calm when first enterring a room. What are your thoughts?

 

[Evie&Adam]

Adam just recently graduated basic training. Before each class, my husband would RUN Adam around the building!!!! Then, we would walk him around inside. We also used lots and lots of treats to keep his attention. Also, since our class was at nite, I would not feed Adam his dinner until after class.

All of these helped quite a bit!!! We still had some probs with Adam settling down, but there was a huge improvement.

Best of luck!

 

[Cami]

I wish I had tried and true words of wisdom for you. At 20 months of age Cami is still NOT capable of entering any room without everyone knowing that she is there! She loves to make an entrance!

We used to "get it" as well when in puppy classes! The instructor would always say, "That's a Boxer for you!"

Come to think of it most of the other dogs were actually quite shy acting and I prefer Cami's "performance".......at least a Boxer can't ever be said to be one "lacking enthusiasm" (sp?)

 

[Rlr.Giraffe]

I only wonder why you'd want a dog that acts all calm? One of my favourite things about Willis is that he gets all excited and wiggles and waggles when he sees people and dogs! As long as we can teach him not to jump up, I am ok with the excitement! Our trainer told us similar things, and she had the most boring docile golden retrievers ever. Who needs it! I would have gotten a robot if I wanted that kind of response; less poop to clean up!

 

[Jan]

I think your trainer is being unreasonable. As you only have one class left I wouldn't worry about it. I would go somewhere else for your next class.

Why is everyone doing different things?

 

[JennieWI]

thank you for your responses

thank you for your responses and reading between my lines to give me the support I was really asking for. I tend to question myself when I'm in disagreement with someone whom I consider an authority on something that I am just leaning about. I especially like the comment about the "robot". I wish I had said something like that to this instructor at the time. and Yes, we do not plan to go back to this instructor. We learned what we needed from him but now his methodology and "cookie-cutter" classes are no longer helping me grow in the direction I want to grow with Gunther.