It's an hour drive out to the boonies where our trainer lives and has her training facility. The plan was for Lily to ride in a crate in the car and Mia to ride in the back seat next to her. Lily REALLY did not want to be in the crate and absolutely would not stop whining and barking. She was so stressed that she knocked the crate over on to little 9 lb Mia. I had to pull over and get Mia out from under it. Lily's crate was all wet on the inside from her drooling so I decided to just let her sit in my Mom's lap. The rest of the drive was much calmer.
We arrived 20 minutes early and went inside to set up. The plan was to have Mia in a covered crate because I knew she would be freaking out and barking a lot with all of the strange (and large) new dogs there. I put her in the crate before the first dog came in so she didn't even get to see him. She barked quite a bit during the class but usually only when one of the other dogs barked. She actually did a little better than I thought she would.
Things went pretty smoothly until my Mom took Mia out of the crate while I was across the room and one of the "new" dogs was still in the room. She had a total meltdown (I wasn't really surprised because of how stressed she was from being in a crate for an hour when she could hear other dogs barking and moving around). It took about 10 minutes for her to calm down once the dog left. She couldn't even concentrate on me enough to have her turn on the first run we did. By her second turn she was happy and wagging her tail. She went on to do better than any of the other dogs in class.
We worked a lot on serpentine again and added dogwalk, weaves, and tunnels.
Mia did really well and didn't have much trouble with it at all. She was very enthusiastic. Although she wasn't thrilled about the dogwalk she did it on leash with just a little encouragement. Next week we have to miss class because we will be in Chicago. It'll be a nice little break for Mia and I to spend some extra time together.
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