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Today Bran started his training for the Kennel Club Bronze.

I was really excited and interested to see how he'd behave back in "structured" training after seeing how much he's come on over the break.

Well, he was just wonderful to handle!

By some miracle, our trainer, Jo, had prepared a class where all commands were to be given silently and we just had to use hand signals or body language to get what we wanted from our dogs. Seeing as this was how I got the breakthrough with Bran in the first place, and is how he continues to work at his best, it was just wonderful. He whizzed through sits, downs, stands and stays with no problems. His loose lead walking was lovely and his focus sharpened immensely once he was introduced to the "bucket" of treats (this was made from a cupped hand holding several treats right under his nose to start introducing hand signals for heelwork, etc).

We've also been asked to start teaching our dogs to "catch from the crane" where we have to hold a treat between a finger and thumb above their noses then drop the treat for them to catch. I'd already decided that I need to work on Bran taking treats from my fingers as he is inclined to turn crocodile on me and snap my fingers as well (today's session has left me with striped bruises down each thumb!), so this was a welcome introduction.

Although, I now know that Bran can't catch. Well. At the moment.

If I hesitate to give him a chance to be paying attention to my hand, he will either offer me a paw or jump up to snatch the treat. If I drop the treat when he is paying attention, the timing is all out between us and most treats bounced off of his nose and into the grass, although one very cleverly bounced off of his nose and onto the top of his head! He did manage to catch a few treats eventually but the horrifically loud "SNAP" of his jaws smashing together around a tiny treat makes me fear even more for my poor fingers!!

Towards the very end of the class, Bran got his bottom bitten by a rather reactive GSD who lunged at him after hearing another dog bark. Poor Bran had just been sitting quietly in the shade and had done absolutely nothing to aggravate the shep. Bless his toes, he was not phased at all though and did some rolling on his back in the grass and gave a few RARRRRRRRRs as the GSD was taken off to cool down elsewhere.

All in all, I was really impressed with him today.

When I first spoke to Morag about my boy, I had said that he loved training classes and probably a little too much as his willy was usually on show throughout! Morag explained that this wasn't a good thing as Bran was probably experiencing a lot more excitement and stress than his body could handle and that's why Little Bran was often on display. This session, it felt very much more like controlled excitement and Little Bran didn't put in an appearance at all! Bran was still waggy and smiley throughout the class and every now and again he would do his bouncy happy dance, but would then settle into a sit or down with no bother at all :o)

Onwards and upwards, m'boy! Onwards and upwards :o)