Meet Emily, a beautiful sweet 1+ year old flat-coated lab retriever mix(we think German Shepherd). We are very excited to announce our newest Foster Mom addition, Jennifer Heggan. Thank you Jennifer for taking the time to and dedication needed to try to train Emily for our organization. We are grateful for you!

In these videos,  Jennifer meets with our trainer, Donna Fournier, for their first training session.

Donna brought her video camera and was able to tape a lot of it. This is very important to us for many reasons: It will help us and the foster mom, to visually see what we/you are doing. We can watch the growth of dog, monitor successes and failures to help with how to best individually train each dog.

I am posting the ‘after’ video of Jennifer loose leash walking with Emily. To really appreciate this, you would need to see the ‘before’ video. Here Jennifer, is only concentrating on getting and maintaining Emily’s focus. The constantly walking back and forth, changing directions is mandatory, and we start off every walk (‘work’) that way. You can see as they walk how Emily looks up, follows (even if her head is not looking at Jennifer, Emily’s ear is tuned in). When Jennifer turns, and Emily does not follow, the “nope” and correction pull of leash gently directs Emily right back on track. (This does not hurt the dog!) For their first lesson on walking together, they did GREAT!!!

The other video is about teaching your dog when to ‘take it’. This is great for teaching a dog to take things nicely with their mouth! You can see how smart Emily is as this doesn’t take her long to understand. Donna only allows Emily to “take it” on command only after Emily ask for it by looking at Jennifer for permission. Watch this all the way to the end, the sweet look that Emily gives Jennifer for her treat is enduring…