The Heeling Begins

4H dog class is always very crowded.  It is inexpensive so all the children in the county train there. The people who run it are well-intentioned, good people.  They do the best they can.  We thought this would be easy as we were working with a pup now with no bad habits. 

Imagine our surprise when King jumped on Lois and attacked her during dog class.  What had happened?  The instructor either didn't notice or didn't know what to make of what had happened. It wasn't a bad attack, no blood was drawn but still very scary.  After Lois was in tears.  I was confused.  I had heard all my life that purebred dogs were mentally deficient.  Maybe King was so inbred that he snapped. 

We were fortunate that our breeder was a very good one.  She had told us that if we had any questions or problems we should contact her.  I called her when we got home.  She referred me to Kathy who was actually the first breeder that we had called.  They trained dogs she said and could help me with this issue.  We made an appointment.  At that time, she was at Stateline Schutzhund.


Kathy went with Lois to the next few 4H classes.  We put King into a class that Kathy was teaching.  He completely turned around.  Kathy understood what King's problem was and knew how to fix it.  It was amazing.  Lois and King went through 2 sets of lessons with Kathy.  In Lois' final year in 4H, King won the First prize in our county and 3rd prize in the entire state of Illinois in his division.