[ SHOWGSD-L ] AKC Novice OB question
- From: "Kristen Cabe" <showgsdlist@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: SHOWGSD-L <showgsd-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 16:26:01 -0400
I need some help with the 'stand for exam' exercise.
Jessie, who is a 15-month old female GSD, has issues about strangers
approaching/touching her. She isn't aggressive; just distrusting. She's come
a long way in the 5 short weeks that I've been taking her to 'beginning
obedience' class. I enrolled with her mainly for the socialization, but also
because I want to go on and take the 'competition obedience' classes with
her, and I wanted to introduce her to a class setting by taking the
'beginning obedience' first. She already knew most of the commands that are
taught in BO, so that made things a little easier for me through the week,
even though some weeks she pretended not to know anything in class and
embarrassed the heck out of me several times. Next Monday is 'graduation,'
and I hope she does well enough to 'pass.' The biggest issue we're dealing
with ATM is her being so wary of strangers. The first night of class, she
would literally 'bolt' behind my legs and try to 'hide' whenever the
instructors started towards us. Now, she is slightly more trusting of them,
but still pretty wary. Last night was the first night that one of the
instructors was able to take her leash and lead her away from me; usually
she 'freaks out,' for lack of a better term, and resists being pulled away
from me (though, once she is away from me, she is ok - this may stem from
vet visits, but I'm not 100% sure about that). Last night was also the first
time the 'stand for exam' exercise was introduced. We'd been working on the
'stand' for the past week, and Jessie was doing ok with that, though
sometimes she would appear confused and remain in a sit. I think she thinks
I'm tempting her to move out of the sit, since we usually do sit-stays
beforehand, so I'm going to try doing it in a different order and see if she
does any better.
Anyway, the issue we're having is that, although she does remain standing
and nibbling on the treats I have in my hand, she eyeballs the instructor
the whole time the instructor is near, and when the instructor reaches out
to touch her, she dances away with her rear end. We need to work on getting
her more comfortable with the exercise, but I'm not sure how. She knows all
my family, none of my friends are 'dog people,' and I'm afraid that people I
don't know might think she's going to bite, and thus make her more nervous
in the situation. I'm going to see if the people at SchH class tonight can
help, but other than that, I'm not sure what to do.
Kristen
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