“Just a nutcase.”
Thor came to Angier K9 as a five-month-old puppy who loves people. When visitors arrived, his owner said, “he’d be like crazy, just a nutcase,” and the family had taken to gating him in the kitchen because it was “just out of control.”
On day one his trainer chose a calm park on purpose, just to learn who Thor was: “He’s very adventurous. He would definitely take off and leave me.”
Quick to learn.
The foundations came fast. On day two came “Thor’s first down without me touching it,” and on an early neighbourhood walk he learned to give to the leash: “he felt it, came right off of it… that’s a much looser leash.”
Even the place cot he first avoided won him over (“He loves his cot now”), and by the end of the program he was heeling off leash: “if I stop, he sits.”
Bass Pro Shops.
On go-home day Kelton took Thor into Bass Pro Shops, somewhere he had hardly ever been. The point was never a dog who ignores the world: “He’s a five-month-old super happy puppy,” Kelton said, and what he was proofing was “that he still listens.”
Calling him away from people he badly wanted to meet was “really hard for him,” Kelton noted, “so him recalling off of that is a really good sign.” He heeled past another dog (“very distracting, but he hasn’t broke the heel yet”) and held a down through a phone call.
“He stayed.”
At the go-home lesson Kelton gave Thor’s owner the bigger picture: a sit-and-wait or a place cot at the door are “just band-aids.” The real goal is a dog who can be free and calm at home, so she learned to mark the behaviour she never wants and give him no other command. And his recall, Kelton told her, is “good enough he can be off leash now.”
Then came the test that mattered most, a down-stay at the front door as Kelton walked out. The first try broke, so he coached her: a calm “eh, eh,” no second “down,” and a hand on his collar. On the next try, Thor held it: “He stayed.”
Kelton’s plan for home: one cue, mark a break with “eh, eh” and follow through, and start his off-leash freedom on a long line.
The next layer.
That summer Thor came back for a refresher stay, and his refresher trainer’s read was simple: “really, he knows everything.” The work was making it stick at home, and the refresher lesson gave his family the order to follow every time: the command first, then the marker, then the collar.
