This afternoon Mum, the dogs and I headed to our very first agility & obedience class to try to wear the pup out, help me learn to train her and get her socialised.
We were a bit wary about taking Rupert (our older dog) as he’s a nervous dog, always has been, but he was in his element running around the lake with all the other dogs and watching the goings on!
TiLi, the pup, was there to actually give the obedience and a bit of agility a go and she did wonderfully well. We started with the ladder, a confidence building activity to get her to trust me when I ask her to do things.
Then we went on to the small dog walk which she was fabulous at. She might not quite have mastered ‘sit’, but she seemed to enjoy tottering over the dog walk.
Finally we moved on to the tunnel. She did super well with that too, pottering through it quite happily, no worries at all!
The couple who run the training were lovely, the lady actually noticed TiLi’s ears were bad (not from poor parenting on our part, from the fact that we got her from an awful place), she kindly cleaned them out a little and put in some antibiotic stuff in them to ease them. Her ears will need more cleaning because they’re still pretty icky, but at least they are a bit cleaner and she hopefully feels better for that.
A lot of my issues are going to need to be dealt with so I can be confident in myself training her and so that my confidence can then rub off on her. I was really nervous going to the lesson but I did really well too, I didn’t panic and, although I was worried about her being hurt or not liking it, I tried to let her get on with it and listen to the teachers.
We’ll be back next week for more fun and games, and in the meantime I need to practice with her at home!
With thanks to Mummy TeePot for the photos!
