THINKING AHEAD – 10.14.2010

Orso and I had a meeting with a wonderful young lady today, Mary Majchrowski who owns Bravo Dog Training in Broward County.  We met Mary through Dee at the BBQ she invited us to back in September.  Orso will be staying with Mary for 14 nights in December to reinforce all the training he has been getting with Dee and me.  She also has conformation experience, so it’s a great way to bring both areas together, especially since January promises lots of dog shows for Orso!!! 

I ran into a dilemma recently.  We love to travel and always leave for the holidays.  This has never been an issue with Mouse & Luna because Nichelle stays at home with them while we are gone.  She has her own room in the house and keeps a key and gate card year-round, so we can take off whenever we want to and not stress about displacing the dogs.  This year, I made our holiday plans before our breeder had announced the arrival of Orso’s litter.  When we brought Orso home, we knew we would have to reconsider our travel plans because he was going to be too young at 6 months of age to stay home without us.  It’s not that Nichelle can’t take care of him, it’s that we are home with him most of the day and she works, putting Orso in an unfair predicament.  We are not comfortable with him spending all day crated while we are parading around the world for the holidays.  So, in early September, we agreed that we would still travel for the holidays, Nichelle would still stay with Mouse & Luna, but Orso needed to be left with someone who will be with him almost constantly AND work on his obedience.  This is where Mary comes in!

Mary follows the same obedience training principles that we and Dee love, which is positive reinforcement and food marker training.  We do not agree with the traditional “crank and yank” way of training dogs and refuse to put Orso through this.  Today’s meeting with Mary was an opportunity for Orso and Mary to meet and a chance for all of us to discuss expectations and realistic outcomes from his 2 week stay with her.  By the time we left our meeting, Mary had taught Orso how to stand on command!  Thanks, Mary!
 
To visit Mary and Bravo Dog Training online, click here or go to http://www.mybravodog.com/.