First Day of Training!

Yesterday was Xerxes' first training class. I must preface this by saying that I know next to nothing about proper dog training. All of the dogs I've come into contact with (up until now) have been decently behaved. There's the occasional trash picker, or counter swiper, or couch surfing dog, but in my opinion, these behaviors are minor compared to the terror that is Xerxes.

The night started off rather frustratingly. The class was scheduled for 8:00 pm (ugh!) in Mantua, which is about 25 minutes away from my apartment according to MapQuest. Because it was dark out, and the roads we needed to take were a bit unfamiliar to us, I decided we should leave at 7:15. At said departure time, we loaded up the car and hit the road with printed directions in hand and the school's telephone number in case of emergency. All I have to say is THANK GOODNESS we brought along the number. After driving up and down Chews Landing, we came to the conclusion that the next road we needed to take, Barnsboro-Blackwood Road, did (and still does) not exist. At this point it was 7:50, so I called the trainer and told him we were having a hard time finding his place. He, using the fastest speech I've ever heard come out of a man's mouth, gave me back road directions that included about 500 twists and turns. It's a miracle I was able to follow what he was saying, let alone arrive at the school. By the time we arrived, it was 8:30.

We sat through about 2 hours of lecturing. I felt like I was back in college. He even gave us clipboards with paper to take notes! He told us everything there is to know about dogs. There's too much to list here, so I'll spare you the synopsis. The trainer, Steve, introduced German commands to us. He said that using English is a bad idea, because you don't want just anyone to tell your dog what to do. You should use distinct words for obedience. We learned "nein," which means "no," and "ya so braf hund," which means " you are a brave hound." As you can imagine, I felt pretty silly yelling NEIN, and then praising Xerxes with ya so braf hund. I sounded like an angry German woman. I'm pretty sure that listening to me yell these little tidbits will be very entertaining to my friends and family.

When we finally got to the training part, he taught everyone how to use "training collars" (commonly known as "choke collars," though we weren't allowed to call them that), which we practiced on his arm. Using those things properly is harder than it looks! During the course of the training collar demonstration, the trainer used me as an example. (Uncomfortable!) I had to practice on him while everyone watched! I found it incredibly hard to concentrate because Xerxes howled the whole time I was separated from him.

After learning how to properly use the "training collars," we moved on to our first task: training our dogs to not eat pizza that's put right in front of their face. Xerxes, in all his glory, decided to be a dunce. It took a while to get his attention since he was more interested in the cat that was slinking around. Kai had to wave the pizza at him multiple times. Long story short: those "training collars" are mighty effective. After about 2 minutes, Xerxes was running away from the pizza. We also taught our dogs to not run outside when a door is opened, and how to walk on a leash without pulling. When all was said and done, we left at 12:00 am! That was a 3 and 1/2 hour class!

We are supposed to practice all of these things and have them mastered by our next class, October 27th. Our biggest challenge will be Darby. She doesn't have the behavioral issues that Xerxes is so lucky to possess, but they do feed off of one another, and I'm concerned that she will "untrain" him. Due to her delicate mental state, I'm positive this kind of training will do nothing but make her poop herself, so training them both at once with the same technique is out of the question. This should be interesting...