Katie and I went to week three of advanced doggie school last night. Many things converged to make this a not so good night for her. With my foot in a boot for the stress fracture, the weather turned cold and windy and me being out of the house more for interviews I’ve spent less time with her working on her homework. So I already figured it wouldn’t be a stellar night. I wasn’t wrong. She was a crazy girl, not wanting to even sit when asked, leaping on people (she used to be shy, that has been fixed!) grabbing for treats, barking at the instructor when he talked too long and kept her waiting, and growling at a dog over in the corner that already has issues and doesn’t need feisty little Katie telling him off.

The topic for the evening was getting the dogs to go DOWN! when we said so, with no hand signals or head motion. Just the word DOWN! Well. Katie will only go down when I motion with my hand. I’ve worked a bit on trying to move her to do it just on a voice command, but I knew darn well she wasn’t going to do it. So we’re in a circle, and the instructor in the middle of the circle is asking each person to have their dog go down. The one just before us went down really slow, and the instructor commented that it was too slow. I told the group that was going to look mighty speedy compared to Katie’s response to my command. And sure enough when I told her to DOWN! she merely looked at me and blinked. Several commands later she was bored and watching the dog in the corner. The instructor says she’s blowing me off. No kidding. So after he finished going around the circle he came over to show me how to train her. He had her treat in one hand, the leash in the other, shouted DOWN! and jerked down on the leash and she went crazy, leaping up, eyes rolling, backing away from him terrified. Great. He felt terrible. He’s used to German Shepherds who aren’t as sensitive as Katie.

Then later in the hour the class of six people and their dogs were split, 3 on each end of a large room. Two by two we put our dogs into a sit/stay and went out to the center of the room. One by one we were asked to call our dogs. Katie does that beautifully. Then he tried it again, with two of us calling our dogs at the same time, from opposite ends of the room. The other dog on our turn is a Mastiff. Biggest dog I’ve ever seen, he is 8 mos old and about 150 pounds. Katie is almost 2 and 17 pounds. So we’re to call our dogs, I have my back to the mastiff, his owner has her back to Katie, we call, and the mastiff races across the room and tackles Katie who had almost made it to me. I never saw it coming. It’s the fastest I’ve ever seen that big dog move. I leapt in between them, (Katie was rolled on her back on the floor, and the mastiff was sniffing her, no dog fight), scooped her up and felt her little heart just pounding away.

So all in all, Katie didn’t have fun at school, though she usually loves it. She still wanted nothing to do with the instructor by the end of the lesson, didn’t even want his roast beef, and was keeping a fair distance away from all the other dogs as well. Today she didn’t want to get in the car when we went to the park, but after about 15 minutes of homework and 30 minutes of walking in the woods she seems fine. I hope next week goes better, I think it will, the instructor was horrified by the mastiff rolling Katie, and very worried about her reaction to him as well. We’ll see.

Meanwhile I go off to my first shift of my first part time job in approximately 20 minutes!