The True Test

After all this training, we went over for a visit with Basil & Guinness' auntie Sugar to see how they would do there at Grandma's house. A big concern for us is *Will we be able to bring the boys over during holiday functions where there is a lot of chaos and such? Will they be dependable or will a fight break out?*

In the past, we let them run loose and they run around the yard and wrastle with all the other dogs. Our trainer friend told us that when we take them over to another person's house for a visit or for a party, we should keep the leash on them and make them sit at our side. For how long? For the whole time until they understand that THIS is the behavior we EXPECT from them at another person's home. Doesn't sound fun does it? Wait.

As soon as we entered the house, kids and dogs and lots of squeels of joy and love were all over the boys. Pretty quickly, we could see something escalating and I moved Guinness away into an open space. The boys dragged their leashes around the entire time. For the first 20 minutes, the boys were not allowed to interact with Sugar, the kids or eachother. I just had them "Sit" at my side with me forward or side ways. Each time they were tempted to get up, I reminded them to Sit again. When all was calm, they were allowed to play and get love, but the leashes stayed on. The kids asked us why we had to do this and we explained that dogs aren't allowed to just crazy in someone else's house.

Basil seemed to be excited (anxious) with this practice, but Guinness did very well and sat by my side the whole time with no protest. I'll have to work with Basil some more. It was hard for him to ignore Sugar when she was egging him on to play.

Next: Working on "Heel" and leash walking.