Friendly, smart and all go.
Akira was a shepherd puppy of about seven months with energy to spare. On her first outings, Kelton recalls, “she barked at everybody that she saw” and dragged toward them. He read it as excitement, not aggression: she was friendly, just “amped all the time.”
Her family’s concerns were the familiar ones for a young, bright puppy: jumping, pulling and big reactions to other dogs. Anything interesting nearby could take all of her attention.
Pressure off, game back on.
Kelton built her first day around tug. “She’s also very eager to play, so that’s something that we can use very quickly,” he said. A light touch of pressure on her flat collar asked for a position; the moment she found it, the pressure disappeared “and she gets to go straight back to the game.”
Play and the environment, he later told her family, are her biggest rewards. Freedom to sniff became her paycheck on every walk.
The loop her family took home: ask for one clear thing, then pay with the game or with freedom to sniff.
Three horses. Not a peep.
On her second day Kelton took her on a long state-park hike, and a group of horses came down the trail. Her recall held and she let them pass: “She did way better than I thought she would.” His tally afterwards: “Three big horses walked by, not a peep out of Akira.”
The same walk taught her a down. Her first try took real patience, each try after that was shorter, and by the parking lot it was, in his words, “a verbal only down.” At a creek she was unsure of, she crossed, then led the way across.
“She’s way calmer.”
Mid-program, her family met Kelton for an evening walk and a long lesson on how she learns: say the word first, keep “let’s go” and “come” separate, and pay her with freedom to sniff. Her barking and dragging toward people, he told them, was “pretty much gone.” “I feel like everything is better,” her owner said.
Then her owner asked to try the loose-leash walk and took the leash, with Kelton coaching the release: “So right there, you would say, ‘Okay.’” Before the night was over came another verdict: “Yeah, but she’s way calmer, like I can just feel it.”
Kelton’s rule for home: always verbal first. Say the word before you reach for the leash.
A down at a busy entrance.
In her last week Kelton took her on a real errand to a hardware store. Outside the entrance she held a down while shoppers came and went: “Her down duration looks really, really nice.” Inside, a shopper stopped to say hello (“You’re just a pup, I can tell”), and Kelton answered, “Yeah, she’s only seven months old.”
His verdict to another shopper: “Her recall’s nice, her sit, her down, her heel,” and “she’s done super, super good.” He also polished a “security heel” in her favourite position, middle, which her owner had already taught her.
