Zoe did so well tonight! I’m so proud of her. After last week I was really feeling like it was going to be a long process, but this is only the second class and she made tons of progress. We were almost a half hour early, so we were let into the training building alone. I let Zoe sniff around the entire room, ran back and forth with her (to try to get her mind off *where she was*), then we picked a seat and sat while the others arrived.

The first to arrive was a young, very friendly lab. I let Zoe sniff noses and say hi - she’s good with other dogs, she’s very submissive but not afraid. The people she’s less sure of, but I think she’s most scared of the general movement and sounds and activity around her. It overwhelms her. So she was looking a little out of sorts while everyone came in and sat down and the class started, but she settled down again.

She spent a good part of the class just laying beside my chair. She wouldn’t stay in front of my chair, and I wouldn’t let her hide behind it, so she just sat beside me and then just lay down. Actually it was pretty funny, she didn’t really want to turn around to face the same way I was, so she sat facing the corner, with her back to the room. LOL I don’t know what that was about. Her body language was much more relaxed than it was last week, though. When she layed down she kicked her back legs out to the side and wasn’t so tense. She was panting with her mouth open.

And, she took treats! I decided to use cut-up hot dogs, she seemed to show the same amount of interest in that as the cheese, and I rather like my cheese myself. So she was taking treats the whole way through class, and eating them. I was so surprized. At the end of class everyone practiced sit, down, and stand with gentle collar pressure and using the treats to lure them into position (to teach them), and Zoe was even able to practice with me. She doesn’t need to be lured into a sit at all, she does need to be lured into a down still (she doesn’t know the word yet, she only knows the hand signal), and she really resisted being lured into a stand. She kept shuffling her butt up to stay in a sit. I think she’s a bit confused on that front. We also practiced a sit/stay with me standing right in front of her and rewarding as she sat there, and waiting for a release. She did well with that - though I was having a bit of a problem keeping her attention on me instead of warily looking around the room at everyone else, but I know that level of distraction is pretty high for her right now.

All in all in was a very progressive night. I’m starting to think that Zoe might make it out of this in much better shape than I anticipated. I was very proud of her, sitting calmly beside me. She whined once or twice (because she wanted to just get out of the building), but other than that she’s so quiet, just sitting or laying there. Huge difference from the barking, wiggling, jumping labs all around us.