Beagle adventures: Social weekend

We are currently the proud owners of one very sleepy beagle who has had the best weekend of her life I think! As owners we too have had a really nice weekend working and playing alongside her.

Saturday

Today's class was 'life skills' and featured a range of different commands and scenarios to test the dogs

Attention
Sit stay whilst greeting people and other dogs
Recall

The attention exercise is an extension of what we've been learning in our indoor classes but this time outside with distractions. It also involved walking on a loose lead which isn't one of Bella's specialities. Needless to say this is an area that we are going to have to work on a lot lol!! But as you can see in the picture she does focus very nicely on you.

Sit and stay whilst greeting another dog and owner was actually bells best part of the class. She sat and she waited without moving 99% of the time and did really really well. Here are some pics of her doing this command.

preparing her to sit and stay opposite the owner we are to greet

Owners move forward without the dogs getting up.

Recall was both a test of coming on command as well as sitting in line and waiting until our turn which proved the harder of the 2 for Bella. All dogs lined up alongside one another and one by one we went up and hubby was nominated to hold on to the dog and long line whilst the owners ran a short distance away and called their dog.

After the class we went on the social walk and this time we had the long line and Bella definately benefited from doing this. She was able to join in much more and had a whale of a time running about and being chased about by the other dogs. It really was nice to see her socialising with the other dogs as Im sure ive mentioned in here before just how few dogs we meet on local walks which is ridiculous considering how many live on our estate alone!! Her reaction on meeting other dogs has also improved massively.