We have another graduate in the family!

Last night, our pup graduated from Beginning Obedience School. It has definitely been a journey, and a difficult one at that. The change, patience, understanding, accepting, and perseverance it took to get us all here was a challenge, but here we are! Chance is officially certified and has come such a long way. When we walked into our first class with Chance, just getting him from the car to inside Petsmart was trouble. He wanted to smell every step and listen to every sound. He wanted to play with every dog and everything was exciting, which made him so difficult to control. Chance is a rescue dog that my coworker was fostering back in February of this year. I fell in love with him and Adam and I adopted him within that same week. We don't know much about Chance's background, but that he was found as a stray and taken in. He had a ton of fleas, worms, and was about 20 pounds underweight. Now he's flea and worm free and has gained about 15 pounds so far (we're still working on it!). We've taken him around to a few different vets and the consensus is that he is about 2 years old. We think he is a boxer, american bull dog, and pit bull mix. He's 50 pounds now and all muscle, so getting him to go where we want to is always a work out.

After tearing Chance away from the parking lot, we had to basically drag him across the slippery floor in Petsmart to get him into the back classroom. Chance just wanted to bolt towards any dog he saw! Once inside the classroom, Chance whined the entire hour! It was so embarrassing. He made weird howl noises and sometimes they even sounded like a growl and he tugged on the leash for about half an hour straight. Over the next few weeks, Chance got better every time. We started taking him about half an hour early to each class and park away from the building to practice what we had learned away from distractions and get him in the right mindset for class. We learned how to walk him on a leash without him scaring people (and us) and now he is able to walk by our side with little problems. We are able to get him quiet, well quietER than he was when he sees other dogs.

On our last day of our 6 week training course, we had to pass some tests. There were 4 cones set up down a long aisle. The first cone was for the command, "sit", the second for "down", the third for "leave it", and the fourth for "stay". It was hard for Chance to focus on the first cone (even though he knows this trick, we do it all the time!) because he was so close to the other dogs in the class still. After about 10 tries, he eventually sat and we were able to move on to the next cone. He went "down" much easier, but still took a couple tries. The third cone was a breeze. He left the treat when we told him to "leave it", something Chance actually picked up pretty well! And the fourth cone was perfect. He "stayed" and I was even able to walk back a step (we didn't have to do that in order to pass) and Chance stayed where he was until I said "ok". So proud! The next part of the final was "come when called". This absolutely melted my heart. Our trainer took all the dogs on super long leashes to the way other side of the store and told us to call for our dogs. Adam and I called for Chance and he came bolting towards us! It was like straight out of a movie, I swear. I felt like an episode of Lassie! Chance ran to us so fast that I had to catch him in my arms as he tackled into me. I'm sure my eyes were twinkling with joy and pride at that part of the test :) We're both definitely oozing with pride and love for our little graduate. Next step is the Intermediate class, which our trainer says we're ready for!

We still have a long way to go, no doubt, but we have come such a long way too. Only way to keep going is up! Go Chance!