Monday July 30, 2018

Week Two Begins!

It’s the first day of our second week of Camp. We started the morning with loose leash walking to prep us for our first outing.

Next, we introduced "Sit" on a pedestal, as well as walking around a cone. Both of these exercises can be extremely useful in real world application. The Pedestal exercise can be used to get the dog to jump onto different surfaces, or into a car. The cone exercise can be useful when a dog gets wrapped around something like a pole, while on leash. It helps the dogs problem solve, so they can unwrap themselves.

We then had a discussion about the outing we will be going on, and also future field trips. Following this discussion we went to Lowe’s. In groups of 4, we practiced loose leash walking inside Lowe’s among all different types of distractions.

This can be very difficult for both the dogs and the Campers, being that this is the first time their dogs have been out in the public amongst people, machines, and loud noises. After walking through different aisles, we rotated to the appliance section. Here, the Campers practiced what they have taught their dogs previously in a real life application. For example, having the dog in a "sit" or a "down" while opening a fridge door.

After Lowe’s, we went to Panera Bread for lunch. When we go out, we place full trust in our Campers, that they will be responsible for their Camp dogs. Today, we had an Incident at Panera, where one dog got spooked and knocked over a chair. This created a ripple effect causing another dog to get loose from its handler. Thankfully, all of our dogs and Campers returned safely back to Doglando.

Once we got back, the Campers got to relax by making fleece blankets for their dogs. While doing this we had a discussion about today’s Incident. This discussion included how we were feeling afterwards, what actually happened, and how to prevent it in the future.

Finally, the day was over and the kids went home before coming back later for our open house.