There are times when dogs need to use their nose, root around, and sniff. It's just part of being a dog. But there are times when it's not appropriate for your dog to sniff around and be nosey.
We've been on several outings where Thunder was allowed to explore a bit as part of her socialization. Today we focused on leaving things alone in the store. In order to set her up for success, we start out by getting her attention before we walk into the store.
We're building up tolerance for the head halter so we used that for part of the visit. It's a nice tool in places of high distraction and it works great if she is real sniffy and trying to investigate everything.
She was far less distracted on this visit. She did great practicing her "leave it" in every place in the store except one spot. It was the bin that had all the smoked bones. We had to work hard to get her to leave that bin.
But most things, including a person sitting on the floor, she did a perfect "leave it." We are at the point in the training where she is starting to generalize that command to a variety of situations. So far, so good! Unless, of course, there is a big bin of smoked bones. But, with a little practice, she'll be able to manage that bin without a problem.
She's thankful that she wasn't told to "leave it" with her friend. Although it can certainly be used in that way, today we just enjoyed our friends.
Dogs and people alike...
Another big day and another hot day. Time to rest up for tomorrow's adventures.
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