Good Citizen

I’ve decided that I’m going to try to push Leela’s training to the next level. She knows most of the basic obedience commands, but she’s shaky on actually following through on some of them. Bridget has agreed with me on this, so I will be working with her over the next few months in getting Leela ready to pass her Canine Good Citizen test. You can read more about the tasks at the provided link, but here are the 10 steps and where we stand on them.

1. Accepting a friendly stranger: This should be no problem. The hardest part will be keeping Leela from taking a quick sniff of the new person.
2. Sitting politely for petting: I’m not sure on this one either. She should be okay, but when people start petting her she tends to wiggle excitedly and lick. This may be unacceptable, so I’ll work on quelling that.
3. Appearance and grooming: She should be fine with the exam. She doesn’t get brushed because she has such short hair, so we’ll work that into our morning and evening routine. I think her current status with the brush is that she wants to play with it as if it’s a toy.
4. Out for a walk (walking on a loose lead): This won’t be a problem. She doesn’t pull. The only problem will be the distractions that are around. If there are other dogs around, her desire to play with them may cause her to stray a bit.
5. Walking through a crowd: This shouldn’t be a problem if I bring her to the test in a tired state.
6. Sit and down on command and Staying in place: No problem. Our stay will be the down position. She’s generally good about the stay command, especially when tired.
7. Coming when called: Of the two or three problem areas in Leela’s training, this is the hardest for us. She is simply more interested in everything else in the world than coming to me. This is going to take some serious work to master.
8. Reaction to another dog: This one is another problem area. She will want to sniff then other dog. She will certainly go into a play bow. I’m going to need some outside help for practice with this one.
9. Reaction to distraction: No problem. I look forward to further desensitizing her though.
10. Supervised separation : There’s a mild chance she might whine a bit when I’m out of sight. If someone else is with her though, she may be fine. Only time will tell.