Teaching an old dog new tricks

I think my dog might fail out of graduate school - or more appropriately my mom and I might fail out of graduate school.

Yesterday was our third week of graduate class with our dog Cassidy. It's our third group class, and man, it's started to be a challenge.

Cassidy has always been a sharp dog. She was potty trained when we got her from a shelter at 2 years old, and she knew some simple commands such as sit and down. When we first started working with a trainer - one on one because Cassidy hates other dogs and wasn't allowed in dog classes - she quickly learned some other basic commands. Within a week, she had learned to stay off the furniture, with a simple command for "off." The command is also used when she jumps up on people. She learned to wait at doorways for us to pass through first with the command "wait." She learned "stay" and "watch me."

Her first group class was one called "Rehab for Raging Rovers." The point of the class was not so much to teach the dogs commands as expose them to other dogs and teach the owners way to redirect the dogs' attention to keep them from getting overwhelmed. The other dogs in the class included a greyhound who had already been in raging rovers several times, a pit bull mix, a cattle dog and a few other dogs who were leash reactive. Of the dogs in the class, Cassidy was actually the one to act up the least and if she did growl, we were often able to calm her down quickly. Especially when we had a bag full of hot dog bits.

At the end of the class, our trainer suggested we send her to daycare a few times a month to keep her exposed to dogs, walk her at parks where we are likely to see other dogs and enroll in the beginner's obedience class. When we started the beginner's class last spring, Cassidy was the star pupil since many of the commands were things we'd already practiced with the trainer or in the rehab class. She had the "watch me" command, one that gets the dogs to look at your eyes, one that has been especially helpful in keeping Cassidy calm around other dogs. She picked up the "come" command quickly and learned the emergency recall command "come now" even faster (since a piece of beef jerky is offered up to her when she listens to that one.)

But the graduate class is finally the one that has slowed down our quick-learning dog. We are in the midst of teaching the dogs heel, and it's a tough command to teach. Our instructor said on the first day as we tried the string of commands together that it's a bit like learning the steps to a new dance. But I don't dance for a reason...I lack coordination. So for the heel training we string together a bunch of commands the dogs already know, except now they have to learn to do them on the left side, without us facing them. We practiced it at home all last week and we could get Cassidy to do all the steps - heel, sit, down, watch me, but we just could not get her to do the stand command. We could tell when Cassidy was getting frustrated with us, as she went through her repertoire of tricks, trying to figure out what we wanted. And sometimes we knew we were getting frustrated and just needed to walk away. Sometimes she seemed to just give up, too, and would hide under the kitchen table.

When we got to class yesterday, the first thing all the owners had to do was take the dogs through the heel commands. Cassidy flew through the commands, but when it came to stand, she jumped up on her hind legs or laid down. The trainer pointed out that my mom was holding the treat for the stand command too high up for Cassidy to reach. So the whole time we were practicing it at home there was a reason Cassidy couldn't get it. It wasn't her, it was us. But the training has been going better, so maybe you can teach an old dog (me and my mom) new tricks.

Photo by Melissa Flores
Cassidy in the down position.