MerrinDonahue.com

We had our third puppy class today, and WOW! Oliver is definitely a smart dog. He’s mastered “Sit”, “Stay”, “Come”, “Leave it”, “Off”, and “Drop”. We had the teacher all to ourselves today (and she’s awesome, BTW), and we focused on working on his specific “beagle idiosyncrasies” which, to my absolute horror, included letting him try to find us both purely by scent and the “Come” command. We basically hid at completely opposite ends of the store, let him off the leash, said “Come”, and lo and behold, he found us. EVERY SINGLE TIME. With no distractions along the way. I swear he came right to me, and then back to the trainer. Then we hid again, and he did it all over. He’s frickin’ amazing.

He’s also the most social dog I’ve ever had. He LOVES people, and he obeys EVERYBODY. People will come up to the enclosure while he’s playing, and if they say “come”, he comes. If they say “sit”, he sits. He knows what he’s supposed to be doing, and he’s conditioned enough (via food reward) that he’ll see it through. Granted, we’re still working on potty training, but the good news on that front is that he hasn’t had a single accident all day.

Now if we could just get him to behave for Kevin as well as he behaves for everybody else, we would all be a whole lot happier.