Grace O'Malley The Irish Pirate Queen

When my husband and I decided we wanted a second dog, we never imagined the trouble we were getting ourselves into.  We scoured petfinder.com for a couple months before finding two dogs that we actually wanted to meet.  One was a sheltie mix named Raina.  Raina was sweet, young, and high energy.  Now I'm not sure why we though we wouldn't have been able to handle her.  Both dogs came to visit us and meet Gidget.  Gidget ignored Raina, but really wanted to play with Gracie (at the time called Malley).  We really like Gracie too, so a few days later she came to live with us.

That first week was really hard.  Gracie discover our bird and guinea pig and did everything she could to try to get to them.  We kept her on a leash inside for a couple weeks.  This let us keep her away from the small critters, keep an eye on her, and be able to reward her for good behavior.  We also put a big gate around the critter cages and squirted her with water with a loud "AH!" everytime she jumped up on the gate.  It took a little while, but she learned that the critters weren't worth bothering.

Another issue was Gracie being unwilling to potty in a new place.  She had lots of accidents those first few weeks.  The crate was our solution.  If she wouldn't potty while outside, she'd have to hang out in her kennel for half an hour or so and then we tried again.  Once she pottied, she could be out of her kennel for a couple hours.  This worked great when we went to new places too!

Our last big problem with Gracie is her reactiveness, mostly towards other dogs.  We quickly realized Gracie had trouble behaving with other dogs (or squirrels) in view.  She'd lunge and bark and growl and become completely out of control.  What was worse was when we tried to introduce her to other dogs in our family.  She would do everything she could to intimidate my parents' dog until they finally got in a fight.  She immediately went after my in-laws' dog.  We knew we needed a lot of help with Gracie.

We got her started in obedience classes as soon as we could.  Working around other dogs on a regular basis helped so much!  I also got Gracie into a reactive dog class where we learned how to reward Gracie for coming back and paying attention to me when she reacts to something.  Even if it's just for a second, if she looked at me instead of the squirrel or other dog she got a reward.  This helped a lot, especially with her squirrel issues.  She'd even occasionally ignore a squirrel!  We recently tried a different kind of reactive dog class.  Our instructor used Susan Garrett's Crate Games to teach the dogs control in difficult situations.  Gracie behaves extra well in class, due to the familiar environment and extra good treats, but I plan on taking what I learned there to places where we have more issues like in front of our neighbors door when their dog barks as we walk by.

Gracie got through three levels of obedience and even tried a couple rally classes before she could finally start agility.  She's incredibly smart.  I still can't believe how quick she picks up on new tasks.  The foundation agility classes have changed a little since Gidget took the classes.  There are now three seven week units: jumping, tunnels/flatwork, and contacts.  Gracie is half way through the jumping class and starts the tunnels/flatwork class on Saturday. 

Hopefully this is my last really long post.  Future posts will summarize classes, at home practice, and other work I do with Gidget and Gracie.  Happy agility!