My Dog the Graduate

Well, he did it! Jake graduated from Doggie Kindergarten. I'm so proud. I keep saying Jake isn't the brightest dog out there and he's alot of trouble sometimes and his looks have saved him more than once and.....where was I going with this? Oh yeah. I'm proud of him.

When he first started the class, I thought we would end up dropping it out of shear embarrassment. Either that or the DT would throw us out out of shear frustration. But between the genius of DT and the perseverance of the handler (me) we made it. Jake now knows who the alpha is in this house. Ok, it's still him. But now he throws us a bone (pun intended) and follows a command every so often. My favorite one is "front". I can say that word, and Jake comes to me from where ever he is in the house. That command alone was worth the money for the class. The funny thing is that he's supposed to come right to me and sit. Sometimes I think he's doing his own "I'll show you who's boss" and he'll head toward me and then sit...about 10 feet from me. Then we have a stare off. The worst thing I can do is walk to him and give him his treat. So I just stand there and stare. He sits and stares. Eventually, he'll sigh, get up slowly and walk the rest of the way. The turkey jerky treat is just too tempting for him to pass up just to make his point.

He's pretty good at the other commands too. He's great at fetching, sitting, and down. He needs some more work on heeling but that's because I need some work on it. He can do a sit/stay as long as his attention span will let him. I don't think they make Ritalin for dogs but I think it would help him with his stays.

Another valuable thing we learned in class was getting him to drop whatever it is he's chewing on at the moment. He used to get something and run around the living room while one of us chased him. Then we would have to call for backup and two of us would trap him and pry the item out of his mouth. He still gets things he's not supposed to but now he'll take a couple of steps, we say "leave it" and he drops it. I know we've taken a huge chunk of pleasure from his puppyhood by doing this but I'm pretty sure it's lowered my blood pressure by at least 10 points.

So at the end of the last class, DT handed us our diplomas. It had both of our names on it. I was very excited and was considering having it framed. Maybe even place it over the mantle. I left the diploma in the van (I leave everything in the van) and Abigail and I went to Walmart the next day. As we opened our doors, a gust of wind came along and blew the diploma off the dashboard and out the door. It flew across the Walmart parking lot. I walked around in the Texas heat for 20 minutes trying to find it. I went back into the store to see if some kind dog lover who understood the blood, sweat and tears that goes into training a dog may have turned it in. No such luck. I just hope it's not an omen.