First of all: a big THANK YOU to everyone who helped us with the whole “Gizmo gone insane” issue. After lots of tiring discussions and panic attacks, last Wednesday we decided to take Gizmo to his first obedience class.
We opted for an obedience and agility course at Luxol Grounds. Gizmo’s agility is without a doubt his strong point: stealing knickers and socks from the laundry basket without anyone noticing until his tail starts wagging at full speed and he starts running across the living room… that’s what he does best. Obedience, well that’s a different story…
We arrived at Luxol (an enormous parking lot) expecting to find a small group of dog lovers, but much to our surprise there were tons of people. The dogs were subdivided into groups, each led by an experienced trainer (ours was something like “pre pre beginners”… need I say more?).
The school is run – I was told – by an ex-police dog trainer. And I think that description matches the stern little man we met as soon as we arrived: he grabbed our dog’s choke chain and told us we “got it all wrong”. Ok, we had bought the new choker literally four hours earlier so yes… we did probably get it all wrong. Then all the newcomers (about 15 in all) were told to stand in line with their dogs beside them. Not Gizmo, though. He had never seen that many dogs at once and couldn’t refrain from scanning the entire parking lot, sniffing around, licking his classmates and wagging his tail, of course…
Andre’ and I were asked to decide which one of us would be Gizmo’s master. Since I spend more time with him, I told our trainer I wanted to give it a shot. Bad, bad idea! Gizmo is strong, very strong. And big, no, enormous. So to avoid sending me home with purple hands and tense muscles, I only got to do part of the exercises: no zigzagging between dogs, but simply walking in a straight line, for example. And he wasn’t allowed anywhere near the other dogs during the walking exercises… too much distraction! At one point, he decided he needed a wee during training... just to make mummy turn bright red...
After talking to the trainer, who advised Andre’ to take over as Gizmo’s master, I returned home with sore hands and extremely painful shoulder blades… and a sense of defeat. However, yesterday Andre’ bravely took Gizmo to his second lesson and while I stood in a corner I thought to myself: “Look at my boys turning into men…” And all was well once again…
In the car Andre' told me there was a small incident, though. Gizmo kind of exposed his private parts (he just couldn't bear all the excitement) and the trainer told Andre': "Get your dog some underwear next time!" That's our Giz...
Gizmo will become the greatest dog in the whole world… or within a 100-m radius… He can do it!
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