From our lovely trainer, Beverli, who had her second training session with Wounded Warrior, William, and his SDIT, Catahoula/Beagle mix, “Justiz”! William suffers from PTSD and severe anxiety.
Beverli writes:
“Today, we had our second training session at Petsmart. We worked on heeling in public amidst all the Petsmart distractions, with having Justiz keep his focus on William, as well as random “stops”, sits, and “leave it” when encountering other dogs in the store. Justiz NATURALLY covers, both in a sit, and when standing! She seems to know exactly how much pressure to put on her handler to make William feel safe. So we allowed her to do this, while talking about why she’s choosing to cover, and helping him recognize how he’s feeling.
Justiz is so in tune with William, that she has a hard time with “stay”. She just wants to be as close to him as possible, so this will need lots of extra attention when William walks away from Justiz – but overall, the reasoning is understandable.
This was our first session outside of their home, so today was about getting a baseline for Justiz’ manners and training in public.
Homework given for William and Justiz to work on was to start “fetch”, “target touch”, and “sit/stay”.
