Dhahran Dog Club

The title of this post comes from a Yahoo group site I set up for people in camp taking the dog training classes. I will do anything for my dogs, including training people and dogs so that I can set up some sort of competitive game that my dogs can play.

The first session of DOG-101 will end in two weeks. The second session will finish a couple of week after that. The classes have been quite an experience but are exhausting to teach. To my surprise and pleasure, most of the people are making an honest effort to work with their dogs. I've seen amazing improvement in some of the dogs--all it took was convincing their owners to pay attention to their dogs and "magically" a lot of annoying behaviors disappear!

I do have a couple of people who are not working with their dogs outside of class. They were easy to spot because by week 6 we were leaping forward on a set of foundation behaviors. Those handlers didn't have the foundation and couldn't do the exercises that week. I feel bad for those people and their dogs but I know there is nothing I can do. They will choose to train and play with their dogs or not. All I can do is show them some new ways to do that. They keep showing up so I hope that something clicks for them (pun intended...?).

By some random quirk, the two classes are radically different. The first class is full of boisterous dogs, any one of which I can select to demonstrate a new skill to the class. The second class is full of soft, anxious dogs. Even after three weeks, some of them still won't let me touch them. Finding a dog in that class to use as a demo dog can be difficult! Those of you who know me know that I am not the softest handler in the world but even when I tone it way down and way back, I'm still too much for some of the super-soft dogs. I do make an effort to connect with each dog though. A tube of squeeze-cheese has helped a lot!

I think that I am a good instructor. I have had a lot of experience speaking to different groups for different purposes. Plus, I'm not shy about sharing my opinion. So the act of teaching itself isn't much of a problem for me. But the dog classes have presented new challenges in terms of time management and especially attention management. I have to make decisions on the fly about who to spend time with--at the expense of others in the class who might also need some help. Every class is an hour-long balancing act.

Word got out quickly in camp about the classes and I've been contacted by lots of people who want private lessons. I'm pleased that many of those folks were referred to me by people in my two classes! I'm even getting something of a reputation. I will be introduced to someone new with the comment, Denise teaches the dog classes. The new person will say, oh, so you are the dog trainer!

Sheesh. As Miranda Lambert sings, "everybody's famous in a small town"!

The classes have given me an opportunity to think about the larger philosophy of dog training--and people training! I've been reading books and articles about training and learning with a fresh eye. And I'm trying out those new ideas on my two bad dogs, to Mimi's delight. She is a training monster. She'd be happy training every waking minute. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that one of my training games is to work them together. I teach them new skills one at a time, then once they learn them, I have them perform them at the same time. The best ones right now are "beep beep" (back up) and having them lift their left paws and wave "bye!" They do these tricks in unison. Hilarious.

After the summer break, I will teach two classes again in the fall, another class of basic obedience (DOG-101) and a new class called Introduction to Rally Obedience, which I've dubbed DOG-201. I think that by the start of 2011, we can begin to have some rally competitions here in camp (can't call them trials, really). I've even got my eye on a couple of people who I want to train as judges. That way I can get Harry and Mimi out there too!