Cajsa and I went to our second Community CGC class in town on Thursday. We met at our local North 40 with the other class members. The instructor always starts out with a warm-up session of just the basics to begin with. We did that in the parking lot before going into the store.

Then we practiced going through the automatic door a couple different ways; making the dogs wait and coming after us, having them “heel” beside us or them through ahead of the handler.



Once we got finished with practicing by the doors, we went into the store where we did sit/stays, down/stays and heeling in different parts of the store. The most tempting session was in front of the dog treats area. And when the teacher set a bowl of stinky cheese in the walkway and the dogs had to walk past it and leave it alone.

Of course, shoppers saw all the pretty dogs and wanted to pet them. Which was great practice for the dogs.

The guy in the biker jacket had a cute little dog in a sling pouch that he carried in front of him. It barked when it saw all the dogs. So our teacher asked if he would walk down the line of dogs. Another practice session of “leave it” if they were tempted to get up and see the little dog.

We practiced a lot of sit and downs with distractions. One was up at the busy check-out counter which is by the entrance. And to add to the distraction, the teacher kept going back in forth with carts, squeaky toys and such.
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Once we finished at that store we headed down the road to a local motel for more practice. First we headed into the lobby, went up to the counter and pretended to check in at the counter while our dog sat quietly next to us. Then into the sitting area, where our dogs were supposed to sit or lay quietly at our feet.


Next we headed outside and up to the second floor for more some “sit/wait/recall with distractions” pracitce

In this exercise you tell your dog to sit, give the “wait”command go a distance and call your dog to you. (“Wait” is different than “stay”. “Wait” means sit here where I left you until I call or release you to move or come to me. “Stay” means do not move, I will come back and give you the release command. I use “okay!”) Of course the teacher added a couple distractions that the dogs were supposed to pass as they went to their owners after being called. Cajsa doesn’t always want to “wait” and sometimes gets up to follow me. So we had to practice a couple times until she got it right. Her recall is spot on though, as she zooms straight to me and could care less about the distractions (usually).

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Once we worked on this for a while, we headed down close to the road to do more exercises near all the traffic.



Class finished and we crossed the busy road and went back to our vehicles at North 40.

“Really mom! You have a take a picture of me in the bathroom?”