Puppy Class!

Yesterday was the KC/Lawrence area PRs and Graduates monthly get-together. It was in Lawrence (in a nicely air-conditioned building-a great thing when it is 92 degrees and sunny outside!) and it was a lot of fun. At last month's get-together Spark was a little intimidated at first but he got over it after 20 minutes. But yesterday the minute we got to the building he started acting all excited (I think he recognized the building). We arrived at the same time as PIT Ferrari and his PR D; the dogs really wanted to play together but it wasn't time to be off-lead yet. When everyone arrived we let all the dogs (probably close to 15 or so) off-lead to play; it was a chaotic and crazy frenzy for awhile until the dogs calmed down a bit. Spark jumped in right away and played with the big dogs the whole time (none of the little pups were there).

For training time we worked on heeling and then on 'down-stays' with distractions. Spark did pretty good at both of these things, but he really amazed me when he 'down-stayed' for almost 2 minutes straight! It helped that he was really tired (we had been in Baldwin City garage sailing all morning with him) and so he held still. But he did really well when E walked over him and when the R/C vehicle drove in front of him he did just as well as the older dogs! Ok, Hosta did better then Spark, but Spark is only 3 months old and Hosta is 20 months old, so I'd sure hope that Hos could one-up my buddy in ignoring distracting things.

 Spark working on his 'down-stay' with distractions.

Spark, Shelby, Nome, Courage, and Hosta all work on their 'down-stays'. Good dogs

 Hosta and I, and C and her SD Elf (Hosta's Uncle) work on heeling.

We got to meet E and  and his little sister L and their parents yesterday at the puppy class. E is waiting on a service dog from KSDS and his family thought it would be fun all the work that the puppy raisers put into training these dogs to help. I was very happy to hear that they follow my blog. E and L both helped work Spark and they really enjoyed playing with and petting him. Now I know L wants to be famous just like her big brother, so Spark wants me to put some pictures of her from the puppy class on his blog.