Third Worst!

We enrolled Helix in Basic Obedience at the Berkeley Humane Society on Sunday afternoons.  Daniel was out of town for the first class so it was just Helix and I.  We arrived first and chose our "area" which consists of two folding chairs with a door mat in front and a water bowl behind.  There are short (6ft long) pieces of crisscrossed pvc used as make shift barriers between stations.  All in all you have about a ten by ten area. The first rule of this obedience class is that dogs are not allowed to meet and greet each other. Obeying this rule is very difficult when you have a bunch of pulling, barking, untrained dogs and owners. Helix is very interested in meeting everything and everyone which results in him jumping, pulling and looking like a caught fish at the end of a fishing line. His attention span is equivalent to a fly's and if anyone barks then it's fair game for him to reply.

The first class was very stressful and felt as though it lasted for 3 hrs instead of just one.  Helix was quickly pegged as one of the least obedient dogs in the room.  The class had 8 dogs in total.  I decided that the dog which had to be behind a bunch of sheets because he is so reactive to other dogs won the title of worst.  He periodically would start barking, inspiring the other barkers to chime in.  In all fairness he may be more obedient than the rest but we just can't see because he's behind all the sheets like a ghost dog, weird.  Second worst was a boxer, ridgeback mix being handled by one completely frazzled man, another semi-composed man and a teenager who more than once allowed the dog to escape.  Then there's Helix with his low attention span and lunging.  After that a dog named Ben, a yellow lab mix, barks a bit and in general doesn't pay much attention to his owner or her daughter.  Then Espirit?? handled by an asian lady and her teenage daughter neither of which are very good at listening to the teacher and they ask stupid questions that don't make sense.  Espirit is a small black lab mix who has the occaisional drift in attention and often decides to venture in to her neighboring zone.  A tan, medium, pitbull mix named Olive is pretty well behaved and hardly ever lunges she wins third place. Then there's a large, grey, pitbull mix who is usually wearing a sweater and is missing a back leg.  He whines a lot but is generally very obedient as long as the lady is holding chicken.  Most obedient goes to Teddy? not sure if that's his name but he's a short, corgi, spaniel, collie mix that is fairly shy and very attached to his owner.

Helix's worst trait is his lack of attention in the face of any small distraction.  It's very trying on our patience to work with him but he does know what he is supposed to be doing because he'll do it all at home just not in class, annoying.  He's really awful at walking next to you on the leash and "staying" which was today's lesson and I thought I might just walk out of the class because he was doing so bad and I was fed up.  The teacher had to come over and alter the task for us because Helix just couldn't keep any sort of attention.

Last week Helix grabbed everyone's attention by popping a squat and taking a big dump in the middle of the teacher explaining the next task.  Yup, our dog pooped in obedience class, awesome!  The teacher actually stopped in the middle of her explanation and said "oh, well, when you've got to go, you've got to go!" I tried to take it in stride but it was embarrasing to have our dog pooping in class.

That's all for now but hopefully Helix will start to gain some attention span and show some improvement by the end of the 6 weeks.