Corgis keep you humble...

We are back in obedience class now that Dash no longer has restrictions on his movement. Hopefully by the end of 7 weeks, he will earn his first set of letters - CGC - behind his name. However, it will not be without making Mom work hard and look foolish along the way. Here is the rundown of class number 2, last Tuesday... We practiced two of the tasks, but not (apparently) the most important. However, that didn't really matter as someone totally disengaged HIS brain.

Task one - Heel on loose lead. Clearly the wood chips were much more fascinating than me. He has never reacted this way. Usually he is a little star. How bad was it. I gave up and just carried him off the pattern as I figured I was just setting him up to fail. Note - I am the only one in class with the option of actually lifting their dog.

Task two - Stay - for 3 freaking seconds but at a distance... Uh NOPE (Granted this is the one we didn't practice). Once the instructor picked up his leash, he sat calmly. He was just confused. We will definitely be working on this more.

Task three - Get left with friendly stranger. No problem. Someone giving him attention. Mom - who's that. Oh. Okay. She's back. Whatever... and no, I'm still not picking my nose up from the wood chips.

Task four - Recall. I left him using "Hold it" instead of Stay as I consider this more of his "wait" command. He sat patiently and then raced to see me on command (finally we don't look like total fools).

Task five - Sit & Down. Nailed those. Did a few puppy pushups. Finally starting to pay more attention to me. Helps that I have now pulled out the string cheese (which he liked better even than the boiled chicken that I tried to use earlier).

Task six - Sit nicely while a friendly stranger approaches. He barely contained his excitment but did as I asked.

Task seven - Sit nicely to be petted by friendly stranger. "At least he jumped on you (me)" instead of on friendly stranger.

Task eight - Heel on loose lead again. NAILED IT. My boy actually does have a brain in his head. Just took 30 minutes to turn it on and another twenty to warm it up.

Fortunately, one of the instructors has a Corgi and can relate. We know what we need to work on! And we have four more classes to go. Then I'll miss a week (my blondeness came out when I planned a trip to Florida - which would have been on test night except for the heat advisory last week...). And finally test night - stay tuned for the events of August 29th.