Sit and Stay!

Four days after getting the dog I decided to take him to the local dog training class. It was a puppy group but as he wa about 6 months old they let him join. I was very determined to get it right with this dog as Fergus never ever came back and would look back and grin at me as he ran at 45 miles an hour away from me. The consequense of this was I could never let him off the lead in 14 years, even two weeks before he died he used to get turbo boosts on when I thought he was old and slow enough to be trusted and I'd have to leg it as fast as I could to catch him.

It was also very stressful when people came to visit as they would do unpredicatable things like go out to their car without telling you, leaving the front door on the latch and the garden gate wide open. Several times I had to drive about trying to catch him as he seemed to like the car and it was the only way to keep up with him (we once clocked him running at 45mph) and when I did he would leap into the car as if I was his chauffer.

So off to training we went.

We walked in and every other dog was a rather expensive pedigree and here was I with a rather mangy, half bald, skinny as a stick lurcher on the end of a lead. Oh dear.

Never fear, everyone was so friendly and even though my dog looked a tad infectious everyone let their dogs say hello which was so nice.

The class went well, I think the dog did better then I did as I kept tripping up and over the dog and generally doing the wrong thing but we agreed to go back the next week and at the time of writing we've been going for 8 months now and enjoyed every single class.

I think the main reason for the dog to like the class was the sausages we used as treats. Being half starved he would do anything for the minutest piece of sausage so the whole thing seemed a bit of a doddle to some point but my fingers were rather chewed from him trying to get at the meat and mistaking my fingers.