Josie's First Obedience Class

I took Josie to Obedience class last night. We walked in and she was a very hesitant and a bit scared- her body was very low to the ground and she was a little intimidated by it all. We were flanked on either side by two big Mastiffs (is that redundant? Is there a small Mastiff?) and at one point Josie gave one "the look" so I have to keep an eye on her a little bit when she's out and about. She is, after all, a female Boxer so being bossy kind of comes with the territory. At one point she was straining at the end of the leash and started coughing and hacking. I felt everyone looking at us because it sounded like she was going to hack up a lung. I think I'm going to get her a harness to take the pressure off of her neck. I'm going to try either this one or this one. I've had great luck with both of these. The rest of the class is in the 5th or 6th week so we didn't do all of the stuff other people were doing - Boundary Training, Walking Leave-its, etc... I basically just concentrated on having her pay attention to me. We did about a bazillion Sits and she did the last one as fast as she did the first! It appears she doesn't know Down at all, so I get to work on that with her and I'm teaching her Shake Paw. We worked on Shake for about 5 minutes and by the end, it looked like she was starting to get it. She really worked well for me (and my treats!). We worked a little bit on a basic Leave it (I put a treat on the floor and asked her to leave it. If she tried to go for it, I covered it up with my foot. As soon as she stopped obsessing about it, I said "Yes!"and gave her a treat. Pretty soon, as soon as I said "Leave it!" she sat and looked at me! Yay! I have a suspicion that she thinks "leave it" means sit and wait for a treat, rather than actually leaving the object alone, but hey, as long as she does leave it alone, I'm happy!). After that, I tethered her to a post walked a few feet away and asked her to sit. She sat about 50% of the time and I figured out that two feet is her comfort level right now. At three feet or more, she just looked at me. Our last exercise was the Come command. She did... OK. It was a very distracting environment so she didn't do great, but she did do pretty well. I asked a lot of her in class and she did her best to deliver. Josie's very smart and very sensitive - she responds very well to positive reinforcement and likes treats as much as attention. By the end of class she was happy, much more confident and eager to do more. When we got home, she crashed on the couch and was quietly snoring in about two minutes. A mental work-out IS as exhausting as a physical one! What a good girl!