Our Lakeland Terrier puppy – ‘Lucky’ is now 5mths old and the time has come to begin attempting some training. The breed is described as strong willed and stubborn and our little monster is both of them and more!
Although clearly very clever, she does what she wants when she wants to. If not in the mood the sound of her name will not even raise so much as a cocked ear and so the training could not come soon enough.
And so last week MrsG and our daughter began the lessons, first of which was an owners only briefing on what would be required, what to expect etc. Last night was the first actual lesson and not entirely unexpectedly we discovered that our ‘Lucky’ was far more interested in all the other dogs in the class than listening to and learning commands!
The trainer assures us that even the most stubborn of dogs will crack in the end but I fear we have one that may take rather more breaking than most. The end result will be a dog that comes to you on command every time, lies down when told and walks on a lead correctly.
As Lucky does none of these at present we are all placing a lot of eggs in this training basket and hoping that we can get her to accede to our commands and take her place at the bottom of the tree and not at the top where she currently believes she lies!
So our house is filled by the sound of the clicker, the small device used to indicate when your dog has done as expected or the sounds of expletives being uttered when she has instead become stone deaf once again.
The reward will come when we she is trained and we can take pride in a dog that can be taken anywhere without fear of being shown up.
MrsG says that if it works I am next on the list!!