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Originally Posted by yorkietalkjilly  Amen. Just walking a dog in a tight circle for a few turns or teasing him with your hand or that ball you always carry in your pocket can help relieve the tension he was feeling prior to the body shake-off. More than anything, a break for the dogs every 10 - 15 minutes for a quick walk around or tugowar or play session with his owner would help dogs decompress during an hour long training class. For already trained, calm, submissive dogs, this long training class would be hard for a dog to keep focus but for new-comers with excitability and behavior problems, it sounds really grinding. I had no idea today's pet-store dog training classes lasted a whole hour!!!
Many under socialized and excitable dogs have ADD-like restlessness and attention spans so trying to keep them focused and well-behaved for an hour is almost impossible. I think it's better to train dogs like that at home in how to focus on you, remain calm and keep their impulses under control in by fun, upbeat, highly rewarding, positively-reinforced very short obedience training sessions and then socialize them in very frequent trips out and about several times daily to places where dogs congregate during the day for short sessions so they gradually desensitize themselves to being around other dogs. |
An hour session is a long period,agreed, but that's ok, it's more to teach me to teach him. To teach me the proper way to handle a situation. Practice session with me & Cody will be short periods, no more then 5 minutes. After that terriers loose concentration. The classes I go to is not a "pet store". The only "pet stores" in my area would be Pet Supply..PetCo and Pet Smart and if they have training classes I wouldn't use them, wouldn't use them for grooming either, but I do buy dog food, toys & sweaters from these stores. While at the vet several weeks ago, Cody was getting over excited with all the dogs coming & going, a lady with 2 yorkies was about to enter the vets office, she was attracted to Cody, turns out she is a yorkie breeder, told me her little yorkies take agility classes and one was training to sniff out ?.I asked if she could recommend an obedience trainer, she gave me the name of the school I am using, where she takes her little yorkies. Is the trainer I am using, using the correct training technique? I have no other to compare her to. I need the training to train my boy. I know he is not going to learn anything in these 1 hour sessions, that's up to me to practice what was taught to me. I am gathering all my YT advise, suggestions and tips and combining them with what I have learned at these sessions. Cody may never be able to play at a dog park which would be sad, a couple of years ago they built a nice dog park about 10 minutes from me, my girl now past was not able to use it, she was at that time about 60 % blind and was getting hard of hearing, I was hoping Cody would be able to go there. But I will get him under control. Again thank you for your wealth of information.