Tilda Tuesdays: Training Your Vizsla

Welcome back to Tilda Tuesdays!

After last week’s puppy pics, this week I thought I'd share a little bit about the training we have done with Matilda over the years.

As soon as we could, we signed her up for “Puppy Training”  through The Canine Coach. We selected the Canine Coach because of all the awesome reviews on Angie’s List. They also have multiple locations (Minneapolis, St. Louis Park, and St. Paul) with a lot of options for class times, which made finding a class that worked for our schedules a lot easier. 

The initial puppy class was 4 weeks long (1 hour per week) and cost $80.

What to expect at puppy class:

• puppy obedience
• self control
• building parent play relationship
• leadership
• chewing
• biting
• jumping
• socialization

This puppy class was SO much fun. Of course, we learned some important skills. But to be completely honest, a lot of what we learned was stuff that I had already read about in a few puppy training books. The true value of the puppy class was in the socialization that Matilda experienced with the other puppies. 

Is anything more fun than an hour of hanging out with a bunch of adorable puppies? 

Next Matilda took Obedience Level 1, which covered the following topics:

• Getting a more reliable Sit and Down (or teaching it for the first time if required)
• Stand
• Developing hand signals
• Stay for 1 minute under distractions of class room
• Getting and keeping attention on you, despite distractions
• Come from distractions (temptation of food and play with human)
• Boundary training (stay out of dining room while eating or front entry while answering door)
• Leave It (do not eat/pick up item dog is showing interest in)
• Drop It (let go of object already in dog's mouth)
• Preventing jumping and sitting politely for a greeting
• Learning how to fade food for all your obedience

After level 1, why not just keep going onto Level 2? 

After Matilda passed Level 2 Obedience, we also took the Canine Coach’s leash training, door greeting/no jumping, and the agility for fun class.

The obedience classes were probably the most practical. The leash training class really focused on good walking behavior. It taught us some useful skills, and though she's not perfect on the leash, I would say that Matilda has decent leash behavior. She doesn’t pull too much and she generally walks pretty well, but she is by no means perfect.

The door greeting/no jumping was all about keeping your dog calm when someone rings the doorbell and enters your house. The primary thing that we took from this class was teaching Matilda to “go to her bed” (one of her dog beds is in the living room) when the doorbell rings. She will zip to her bed quickly with the hope that she might get a treat afterwards. 

She "goes to the bed" pretty well, but staying in the bed after someone comes in? Not so much…Again, it was nothing against the instructors or the class, but all about the fact that we did not practice this enough.  She loves to bark at strangers and will only stay in her bed for a treat if she sees that it is Dustin or me entering the house. Anyone else who comes to the door is way more exciting that a potential treat.

The agility for fun class was a BLAST.  There were tunnels, see-saws, planks, hoops, and more.  

The best part of the class was the variety of dogs that participated. There were some tiny Pomeranians and other small breeds running the agility course, which was so adorable. Vizslas are naturally pretty agile, so Matilda never really had any trouble with the course, but it was entertaining to watch the smaller dogs try out the obstacles.

We took a lot of classes, yet some people might think that Matilda still has some naughty habits. So does that mean that the classes didn't work? Not at all. Yes, she still has some bad behaviors, like licking people's faces or sneaking food off the table when no one is watching. Yet the Canine Coach gave us the tools we needed to train an obedient dog. Any shortfalls are only because we weren’t the best at enforcing these rules consistently.  

Had we been more diligent after the classes, I am sure that Matilda would be perfect…Well, she’s still perfect in our eyes.

One other option that we occasionally tried for a new puppy is puppy play time. We attended a few of these at the Bone Adventure store in Wayzata, and they were great.  More information HERE.

What kind of training did you do with your dog?  Did it work? Did you do all your training on your own? From a book? Please share!

Tilda Tuesday: 8/5 HERE