Sit, Ubu, Sit. Damn it!

I am really hopeing that puppy school gets a snow day tomorrow.  My puppy ate my home work.

We didn't have the time to drill that we should have and it wasn't my fault. Thursday I had to go get the new crate so I had to spend time dealing with it and that ate Thursday night, Friday I had to deal with the crate some more and it was First Fridays and I had to go and support local business with my presence if not my money, Saturday I ran errands with the dog and watched TV, Sunday we went visiting, Monday I went shopping.

Last week we drilled and drilled and drilled and he made zero progress. This week I decided to focus on walking without the pinch collar and he made great strides and really surprised me by not pulling my arm out of socket or showing his ass all over downtown. I enjoyed walking him and wasn't exhausted afterwards like I have in the past when I didn't use the pinch collar. I'm not sure that this is going to be enough to make my instructor happy with his progress. I have learned that he will follow the commands to sit/down/stay -  if I feed him enough snacks. I don't want him to turn into a treat whore.

He is not going to his "place" because I don't care enough about it and I have never been told why this is an important skill set for him so we don't work it. He is pretty good about going to crate when told to "crate up" and this works for me. I also hate the clicker.

I am not into props and the clicker is a prop. I want the dog to do as asked because I told him to do the command, not because a clicker clicked at him or he got a snack bribe. I know its good for the training process over all but  all Pavlov's dogs did was drool on cue ,my dog responds very well to "Good Dog!" and I prefer that reward to a chunk of byproduct. Also, the store never charges too much or runs out of "Good Dog!", it also don't go through the wash  or gets ground into the carpet or goes stale or draws bugs.

It doesn't matter how well he performs the skills for me at home, the group class is a circus and my dog has performance anxiety.