A dog changed my life (3)

I suppose the first significant change to my life was to get beyond my gate without my car. I thought I was keeping fit doing hours of gardening most days. I had no idea. 

Until puppy/dog training could begin in earnest, we took walks, on lead, around the neighbourhood. A stop-start, back and forth process that is integral to all dog behaviour but was not calming or soothing for me. Also, my breathing was laboured and my body ached. Neither of us were getting the exercise we needed. We had to cut that umbilical cord

Initial training sessions were utterly useless. A huge group of about 25 owners and their young dogs stood in a huge circle outside, where a young softly spoken woman put us through our paces. The wind blew, the dogs yelped and yapped, and I caught not a word. Utter failure. We bummed out!

The next big step was to go to the high end, top shelf trainer. I was worried about the cost, but a council subsidy came to the rescue. Jodi and I were now in the hands of a wonderful Irish woman. Her voice carried. She laughed a lot and clearly preferred dogs to most people. It turns out she was a qualified lawyer, did all her dog training courses in the States and really loved jumping out of planes!

Finally we were on our way. Up to this point Jodi was increasingly taking charge, chewing all my tapestry cushions and refused to play fetch. I had had visions of sitting in a chair with gin and tonic in hand, throwing a ball and wearing the little monster out. Yeah right!

Our initial daily walks on the beach were perfect. Jodi zigzagging all over, greeting all people and dogs, learning social skills the natural way. And I became accustomed to interacting with so many of those people Jodi befriended, quickly getting to the point of exchanging names. I was establishing a larger friendship base than I would ever have done without Jodi crashing through those barriers. 

In the meantime Jodi was taking to the new training sessions really well. I was a lot slower. I wasn't exaxtly stupid, I just needed to understand the principles. it didn't take me long to realise the trainer was working on the dog owner rather than the dog. Also, once I realised that consistency was key (not a strong trait of mine), we made good progress.

So, the next level was sniffer training. I dismissed agility classes because I was hopelessly not suited on a hundred levels!

At this stage, I was getting much fitter and was keen to take Jodi on a variety of walks.

Somewhere along the way I went from no mobile phone to a scary cell phone, with wonderful camera, and a whole new world opened up before me 🤗🥰