Last night was Max’s second night of training. He actually did better on walking around the store with me when he did not see any other dogs, but once the dogs began arriving he started barking all over again. He just kept going and going and would not do all the things that he has learned at home. He is doing great with the clicker training at home and he could sit and wait and all of the things that they were talking about last night, but he would not show it by looking at his behavior. I told one of the ladies there that he did not bark at home, well because he does not. He never makes a sound unless he hears something outside and she acted like she did not believe me. I could not blame her because of the way he was acting it was hard to believe it myself. There was another Jack Russell at the class as well last night and you could see that mine had never spent time around other dogs compared to that Jack Russell. It made me kind of sad to see the other dog being able to go around the other dogs without barking or snapping at them, but Max he was not having it. I am not sure but I think he was looking for some kind of attention from these actions because he would have never done this before. Like I had stated in another part of my blog he was around my mother’s dog and never did any of this.


He went on so long during the class with his barking that the trainer thought that it would be best to put a muzzle on him to calm him down and give the other dog owners a chance to hear what she was talking about. I do not like muzzles, but I thought it was in the best interest of everyone including Max. He had the muzzle on and I felt so sorry for him because he was crying the whole time, but I tried not to show it the best that I could because I did not want him to get a reaction out of me. He did start to sit once he got the muzzle on and he was listening to me a little more, but when we went for a walk around the store customers that were walking around looked at my dog like “he must be a biter.” It made me feel bad for Max because he does not bite at all, but there was nothing that I could do.

Loose Leash

Last night the thing that we were suppose to learn was how to get our dogs to walk on a loose leash. I thought that would never happen with Max. He was normally the one that was pulling me around by the leash. Last night there was a change in him though. She gave us each a section to walk down and told us to practice by ourselves on how to get our dogs to walk on a loose leash. When he was not around the other dogs he did this perfectly. I learned how to stop and let him loosen the leash himself before I started to walk with him again. The trainer even said that she saw great things from him when he was walking, but once he saw her dog, that she uses to train the other dogs he went crazy and stopped listening to me again and even found a way to start barking through the muzzle.

Needless to say I am feeling less and less confident about Max learning to be around other dogs, but we

Shall see. There are 6 more weeks of training and if he does not get along with the other dogs, then I will just feel like it was a waste of the money. Right now the only thing I can say is that I get the papers that explain what the training in tales for the night like a direction sheet, but that could have been given to me without having to find a babysitter and spend money on that and the training classes as well. I am hoping that he will come around so I can view what the trainer is showing us. Oh and because of Max’s constant barking I have no idea what we will be learning next week.