Earthdawg

Shelby had her first Earthdog training session on Saturday. I was pleased with her progress. She was fine about entering the tunnel after a short re-introduction.
When she got a chance to meet the rats, she was much more interested than she was last summer. She didn't bark or anything, but she did chase the cage, and jump up and try to bite the cage, which was good. She did ok with the rats inside the tunnel too-she went right up to the end and was trying to bite them and scratch at them with her paw. We ended up taking out one of the bars so she could get a little closer, to see if it would rev her up a bit more. Her interest level stayed high even when it was the other dogs' turns with the rats.
One thing I hope to train her to do is to bark at the rats. They don't have to bark to qualify, but it's the best signal of work. She doesn't bark much in general, only when she is out in the yard and hears other dogs barking or sees a squirrel. So we'll have to work on that.

One of the other dogs in class was a mini-daschund name Gunner. He's almost a year old. He was so cute! I was helping his owner teach him to go in the tunnel.