So! Today's class went well. We did the 3 minute separation thing, some distractions and brushed up on anything the trainers noticed we were lagging at.
Sasha, as usual, did great again. One of the trainers, during the meet thing said to me: "I really like this dog, I really do." That made me feel better about Sasha's less-than-perfect downstay which she'll break at random times. She's getting better but still needs some work.
She is pretty good with other dogs walking by, even sniffing at her. There was a playfight between to dogs beside us and she ignored them the whole time.
So as long as you don't go waving a steak in her face she's great with distractions. In a class setting that is, I still need to take her out a bit more and work on real-world distractions.
Sasha has also almost gotten heel down. She will still stray or stop to sniff things but she's at about 80% right now, and that's very good.
I still would have liked to have done this with Conker instead but I know the friendly stranger and supervised separations parts are what would really get him. Unless it's a calm, quiet woman he don't want nothing to do with them. And even then it normally includes touching, which is also required. In the separation part I know he'd flat-out fail, and I don't want to stress him with that sort of stuff right now.
I'm hoping that I can find an actual class for this to take with him, one where there are less dogs so the trainers can focus on the problems of each dog instead of just go with a general survey of everybody. I'd be even better if the class were for shy or fearful dogs, but I still haven't found one yet.
Glad things are going well.
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