Meeka joins our challenge this week with “first time in a seat belt harness” substituting for something out of her comfort zone.
"Check me out, I'm wearin' read!"
"be comfortable in your skin crazymomlady and don't worry!"
I always think of the CGC (Canine Good Citizenship) and in my naivety I think, “oh, she (whichever girl) could do that. . . or that. . . or. . .” well you get the idea. And Meeka could, no doubt about it. But when I started breaking it down I was surprised how many things there were that Maizey would find challenging.
I feel strongly that a dog who passes the CGC should really be able to pass with flying colors. There is nothing worse that a pup, or a child, or an adult, that says they qualify for something but end up being not such a shining example.
So with Maizey I really want her to be solid with the skills. Obviously Test 8: Reaction to another dog is not passable at this stage but I decided I was focusing too much on that as a problem area. While I don’t think that was really affecting Maizey negatively,it was affecting my motivation negatively.
So I decided to keeping doing what we are doing with reactivity and refocus on ALL her skills. Out of the ten items on the CGC test I see only two others that may pose a significant challenge. One is Test 1: Accepting a friendly stranger and the other is Test 10: Supervised separation.
With test item 1 the problem is that she is too accepting of friendly strangers. She pretty much thinks every human in the world wants smothered by Maizey ‘face hugs’. Since she is too little to reach their face she settles with jumping all over them. Not that we allow this, but she thinks we fixed her knees to restore her position as resident spring of our house.
The CGC test rules state: “The evaluator and handler shake hands and exchange pleasantries. The dog . . . must not break position or try to go to the evaluator.” So meet and greets of the 2legged variety has moved to the top of the Maizey Lessons Priority list.
(Due to the sheer volume of her challenges this post has been split for easier management by all readers. So do you need a break before learning how many 2legged friends Maizey smothered on CGC Prep Training Challenge? Take a breather and then dive in to see if any survived!)
