That most difficult of moments has begun, time to phase Alice out temporarily and start working with Rolo. Alice will be on mummy duty hopefully late this year so she will not be able to help me.
Rolo is a very young dog and has just turned two years old. He still has a lot of puppy energy in him and that is always a struggle as his patience is extremely low. The issue with many balance dogs is that full training for a lot of the balance work cannot safely begin until the dog has reached full maturity. With Hamiltonstovare, they are a very slow maturing breed both physically and mentally. Rolo has finally reached that stage when he is physically able to handle the pressure and physical constraints that will be asked of him. He is not ready at all for the CGC (Canine Good Citizen) test by a long-shot so the work for him will begin this week for his CGC.
The CGC is a multi-step test that consists of 10 tests and the dog must pass ALL of the test, just one failed test and they fail the entire CGC test. As a show dog he will be fine with several of the tests right off the bat, like accepting petting, greeting a stranger dog, walking in a crowd, reacting to a loud noise, and the 2 minute separation. His areas that he will struggle at are sit, sit and accept grooming, down, the 10 foot sit, stay, come.
With any new training learning the basics are always the best place to start. So our first thing is to teach him to sit, stay and down. At that time is when I will also start training him on standing still as I press on his shoulders and gradually apply body weight to push off of him.
I am really hoping that his training will focus his energy a bit more and make him more of an adult dog and less of a 70+ lbs lap dog/puppy.
Rolo is a very young dog and has just turned two years old. He still has a lot of puppy energy in him and that is always a struggle as his patience is extremely low. The issue with many balance dogs is that full training for a lot of the balance work cannot safely begin until the dog has reached full maturity. With Hamiltonstovare, they are a very slow maturing breed both physically and mentally. Rolo has finally reached that stage when he is physically able to handle the pressure and physical constraints that will be asked of him. He is not ready at all for the CGC (Canine Good Citizen) test by a long-shot so the work for him will begin this week for his CGC.
The CGC is a multi-step test that consists of 10 tests and the dog must pass ALL of the test, just one failed test and they fail the entire CGC test. As a show dog he will be fine with several of the tests right off the bat, like accepting petting, greeting a stranger dog, walking in a crowd, reacting to a loud noise, and the 2 minute separation. His areas that he will struggle at are sit, sit and accept grooming, down, the 10 foot sit, stay, come.
With any new training learning the basics are always the best place to start. So our first thing is to teach him to sit, stay and down. At that time is when I will also start training him on standing still as I press on his shoulders and gradually apply body weight to push off of him.
I am really hoping that his training will focus his energy a bit more and make him more of an adult dog and less of a 70+ lbs lap dog/puppy.
Here's hoping I will have good new to report soon regarding his training. He is a true joy to live with most of the time and I hope he makes the transition into a service dog easily. He has already proven himself quite well in the show ring by quickly earning his UKC Champtionship and needs just one more successful pull for his UKC Weight Pull title.
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