Dan is 3! His birthday (Jan 10th) snuck by us this year, but we were at the beach for the weekend – I don’t think it could have gotten much better for him! He had a great time chasing the ball for hours with Sammy, Jack, and Bean.
I am trying to re-assess my goals for Dan every year on his birthday. Of course I am thinking about it more often and taking notes on single behaviors/experiences, but it is nice to have our big picture list each year.
Over the last year, Dan has learned to:
- Play Frisbee – and actually bring it back sometimes!
- Ignore other dogs at the park to play fetch instead
- See dogs from the car without barking
- Walk around our neighborhood without too much pulling or barking. There is definitely room for improvement but this is actually a fun thing to do with him now instead of a dreaded chore.
- Do lots of foundation skills for agility
- Do up to 3 jumps, the table, and the teeter for agility (at speed)
- Do obedience commands in random order
Our training goals for this year:
- He’s gotten over bikes, shopping carts, cars, and busses, even squirrels. But not skateboards. This is on the top of my list!
- Barking like mad at UPS/FedEx/Mailman – I think all of my online Christmas shopping created this problem for us.
- Herding the cat very intently – He will literally stare for hours. He never tries to harm the cat, but it definitely is annoying for Cecil (and us!). I am pretty sure he will always do this to some extent, but the goal is to at least get him to stop when asked for more than 10 seconds.
- Fine-tune our neighborhood walks – no pulling, more attention, ignoring other dogs.
- Obedience commands in novel environments (parks, parking lots, new buildings, new neighborhoods, etc.)
- Practicing his calm behavior near other dogs in novel environments, separate from playing fetch
- Continue agility foundation skills
- Do agility in some new places – introduce the rest of the equipment (weaves, a-frame, a full tunnel, dog walk, other jumps)
- Take a private agility lesson
- MAYBE do a group class – we will see how everything else goes
Stay tuned as we work on these things. I will be posting updates and pieces of his training throughout.
Happy Training!
Laura