Gir Graduates from Beginners Training

This past Wednesday night, our cute dog (I guess he's not really a puppy anymore) graduated from his first training class! It was an eight week class that taught him some tricks like sit, stay, shake, and down, and also taught the "puppy parents" how to understand our dog's behaviors better and what to do about them. Our main goal and concern for Gir is his socialization. Chris and I adopted Gir about 2 years ago from a shelter in South Carolina when he was about 6 month old (and SOOO cute). The people who ran the rescue center told us that he and his siblings had been found in a cardboard box abandoned (I still can't understand who would want to abandon such cute and

innocent puppies) and we discovered that Gir, understandably, had some issues with new people and places. We have been working on trying to help him socialize, but with little success, so, we thought that we'd try training. Our trainer Robyn was amazing and really helped us with Gir. There was one other dog in the class, a seven month old boxer named Hinkley. For the first couple of weeks, Gir wouldn't let Robyn or Hinkley near him, but the last couple of weeks he really started to improve. He would let Robyn sit next to him and pet him and even began taking food out of her hand. He also began letting Hinkley smell him and once in a while, he tried to play. Even though Gir has made some progress, he still has a long way to go, and hopefully the intermediate class (which we signed him up for) will help him out even more. On the graduation day, he got to wear a little cap (as did Chris, luckily they only had one, so I didn't have to wear one) and he got a diploma. It was so cute! I highly recommend training for anyone with a dog that has some difficulties!