Reactive Rover Graduate!

Last week Delilah graduated her Reactive Rover class!  I'm so proud of her, she tried so hard to focus and work during class, even when she got stressed or anxious.  She was such a good girl!  I'm really glad we took this class, it was so interesting and gave us a lot of ideas and exercises to work on.

I talked to the trainer after the last class and asked him if he thought she was ready to take "normal dog" classes.  I was specifically interested in his recall class.  He said she might not do well in the recall class because there are some points when the dogs are off leash in class and he wouldn't want her getting trampled by bigger dogs, but that he does drop in class that teach the same skills, just on leash, that he said she would do well in.  So we might end up doing those.  Or we might just go straight back to sports.

Obviously, before we do any more training, she going to need to get surgery for her knees.  She has grade 3 luxating patellas and they have been getting progressively worse.  So the next thing we're going to focus on with her is that. 

After, if surgery goes well, we may do private agility lessons with the goal of being able to take agility classes if she is able to handle that environment without getting too stressed or overwhelmed.  If surgery does not go as well as I hope, we may start taking some nose work classes instead.  There are a few classes in my area and I've heard it's a good, low key sport for anxious dogs.

So proud of Delilah!