Okay, so I met with the new trainer tonight and let me start off by saying WOW. If I had met her first and done a session with her. I would have INSTANTLY known something was off about Sit Means Sit.
She was all about positive reinforcement. She groaned and pulled out flyers on "dog myths" when I told her my stepdad was trying to alpha roll Juno. She said, and I quote "Don't even get me STARTED on Cesar Milan."
She LOVED my dog, and we immediately started working on positive focus exercises to get Juno to focus on me. Juno clued in VERY fast and you could see when she realized what wanted her to do.
She said that Juno would do excellent with clicker training and is sending me some info on it. I'm also going to look at the stuff you guys posted in here about it as well.
I am so excited! She has me all psyched up. She took us outside and we walked on loose leash walking. She had some good advice about darting about the door. She gave me plenty of ideas for games to play with Juno to teach her to focus onto me. To go to her crate. To teach her a recall. She's e-mailing me about emergency recalls and resource guarding on the bed.
She said I'd been doing a lot of good things for my dog. Reassured me, as you guys did that crate training Juno is GOOD and that I've done good things in socializing her and in ways I've tried to train her.
I loved that she could see the potential in Juno that I saw and that she was so positive about it. She said that she doesn't train her dogs, she plays with them, all the time, and uses that to reinforce good behavior and because of that, her dogs would choose her over any other fun, and that's one of the ways you get a good recall.
I loved that she and I were talking about how good Juno would do in agility, and even though she teaches agility as well, she recommended me to people who teach it but that are closer to me than she is, to save me money. Seriously, that's awesome.
I thought it was funny too that she speculated that Juno might have some Australian Kelpie in her, and then I came onto the forums here and saw the same thing, and I agree, holy crap she could pass for a purebred!
I'm feeling so energized and excited and feeling more capable. I'm signing up for the group classes she teaches and provided I can afford it, I want to do a few more private lessons as well.
My sister and brother-in-law were there as well and are both excited about working with her too. They saw how quickly she caught on and realized what we wanted her to do. It was so neat to see the moment she "got it".
Anyway yeah. Super long post again, but I thought I'd update you guys. XD
