Stewart has done excellent his first week here with us. He is a smart little guy and I am having a lot of fun working with him. He does great with his "place" command. He is also doing well with sitting and waiting at the door to go out or come in. He is having a blast with the other dogs too. He is 95% off-leash now. I rarely have to use a leash with him at all now. He goes outside off-leash, plays with the other dogs, and performs all of his commands off-leash. We are still working on more consistency with him, but he is still very controllable off the leash. Every now and then he gets a little spur in his rear and does a little "freaknik" dance around the yard, but then he will come back when I call him and sit at my side. The biggest challenge for you when he comes home will be working with his adolescence. You must be consistent and not let him get away with disobeying. You must always follow through with the commands you give him. Treat him like you would a child. You would not want an uncontrollable kid running around. Believe me, he understands what is expected here, and he is so smart that he can learn bad behaviors as quickly as he can learn good ones. Keep this in mind while you are waiting on him to come home. The hardest part of dog training, is training the owner.
I have also been working on the "speak" command and "wave". For "speak" I am using the German command "Gib Laut", pronounced like it looks. You can check out the short video clip to see these commands. We are still working on consistency with these commands, but for the short time we have been working on them, he is doing very well. I hope to try working with the frisbee later this week.
