A Pro Assessment for Diego

We had quite a great doggie education session yesterday. Er, really it was about educating us; dog training really is about training the human, right? Greg Sharp from Gateway Dog Training came by and gave us a one hour assessment of Diego.

The coolest part about the session is realizing both how little and how much I already knew. The problem for me is in filling in the gaps in training stages and I got some great tips on some things I was leaving out.

Since Diego's anxiety issues were at key here and we spoke about that at length. In Diego's case it might better be described as "separation frustration" than anxiety. He simply has a strong need not to be left out of any action and be part of the pack. This is also reflected in the fact that he hasn't peed in the house in over a week, destroyed anything, and it getting somewhat used to his crate.

Another important aspect in controlling anxiety is to always be able to keep your dog occupied when you can't (espeically a pup, but my older dogs like something to do to). A great trick Greg showed us was to put a milkbone or other treat inside a Kong toy... Will keep 'em occupied for a long time. You can also shove some liver treats in a beef bone.

Happy training!