Dog Class
I am a fan of school. Or maybe learning. I am also generally a good student. Good student in the sense that I good good grades, not necessarily teacher’s pet. I was what I like to think of as an A- student. My grades did tend to float around there, but what I mean is I did just enough to get an A (sort of). Consider it economical use of brain capacity. I could generally slack in various ways, but I could learn fast enough to pull it together when I needed to.
Now, what does this have to do with dog class? Well, we had been taking our dog, Bella, to class for a couple of weeks. And for the first time in my life, I was not in the top X percent of the class. In fact, Bella was probably the worst student in class. This is difficult because tactics that worked for me, just don’t really work with Bella. As a student, I could identify weaknesses and cram to improve weak areas. But I can’t really make Bella cram. I tried, it didn’t work. Training seems to be largely a lot of repetition, and I guess there are no short cuts for it so we just need to grind it out and put in the hours.
But it isn’t simply a matter of studying/training either. In class, when learning new things, Bella also had a difficult time. She couldn’t seem to stay focused very long. Our dog has a learning disability! Well, we kinda realized that early on. She is extremely hyper and all over the place. She basically has ADD (or is ADHD the hip thing now). For now class is over. She received a certificate for completing the class, but I was a little embarrassed partially because together (the owners and the dog) are the “student” and I’m not sure how well we really did and I feel partially responsible.
Oh well, we’ll wait for her to mellow out a little before trying another class. My kids better be smart.