Gency

My dog is my best friend. Man's best friend is literally my best friend. Like, I'm more likely to hang out with her any given night than anyone else. For awhile I was interested in training her to do cool tricks like crawl and roll over, but now I'm working on much more practical stuff. More than anything I am focusing on sit, stay, come. She's getting really good. Whenever she thinks I want something, her go to reaction is to sit, so that part is pretty easy. She is really good at stay as long as she can see me. I walk for a couple of minutes down the alleyway away from her. I turn around and shes just sitting there waiting for me to call her. However, if I walk the opposite direction that she is facing, it is very hard for her not to pivot on the spot to watch me. Which is ok, I suppose, and it doesn't really interfere with the whole staying part, but I'd really like it if her stay was super solid. Also, "heel" is a pretty essential skill I'm teaching her. Teaching her to walk well on the leash is the hardest thing I've done with her. By nature, she just likes to pull. At first, I tried just walking the opposite direction every time she pulled. But then she just got kinda confused and started pulling in circles at the end of the leash. Finally I got through her skull just by having a piece of meat in my hand that she follows. Now, if the there aren't any distractions, she follows by my heel almost naturally. She'll do it if I'm jogging too. If I can get her to trot next to my bike, that would be awesome, but she's a little bit terrified of the contraption from our first attempt at that. Also, whenever people are hanging out outside, and she decides to lie down, I throw chunks of dog biscuits at her, making sure she doesn't realize the source. Apparently, it should reinforce the desire to lie down and chill out when people are around. For the most part, she's super chill, which is great, and a top notch cuddler. When new people arrive, though, she tends to jump up on them, especially women. I'm using pepperoni to interrupt that behavior.