I’ve been a bad dog mom regarding Samson’s training. If I knew do-diddlly-squat about training a dog it wouldn’t be a bad thing.

But I know. I went through an extensive dog training class with Bear, my keeshond that I had for 14 years and lost about 2 years ago. She was smart, and trained fairly easy, could do tricks. In fact, ask my cousin Mike who swears Bear was the smartest danged dog he’d seen.

I trained Bear from baby puppy of 16 weeks on, and we bonded and learned together.

Sam is a whole different story.

You all know I got my pound puppy when he was seven months old, and he’d lived in the city pound for a month. Those of you who have visited this pound know what it’s like.

I suspected he’d had the beginning of house breaking because he has only had a couple of accidents. But he’d never been on a lease until I took him from there back in April, and he was a wild thing. Now, this wasn’t such a problem when he was a 45 pound pup. But Samson is getting into adult dog now. He’s close to 60 pounds, I’m sure. That’s enough dog to drag my butt up the sidwalk on a lease.

Unless he’s trained, which he ain’t.

Bad Jan. This is totally my fault, because I spent all my free time getting my first Presents into Mills and Boon on time. Which I did. 🙂

So I started training Samson to heel today. His first lesson was fifteen minutes, and after five minutes of him jerking my shoulder out of the socket, he learned that the collar biting wasn’t fun. And he started to listen to me. My voice commands. My hand commands. And my body language.

At the end of that sesson, Samson was walking beside me like a good boy. He stopped when I stopped, and when I told him sit he sat.

So maybe this won’t be such a chore to train him to the leash. See, I want to take walks with Sam when I get off work–when the weather cools, like my friend Edie Ramer does with her dog Skye. And I’m not about to tolerate getting dragged up the sidewalk by a dog that is beginning to look like a young lion now.

Plus, Samson just needs to learn to heel for his own protection. He needs to trust me to look out for him, like I trust him to be my guard dog and my companion dog.

So, while my friends were off in San Francisco this week, having loads of fun and networking, I did churn out pages on my second Presents for Mills & Boon. And the added bonus of teaching Samson how to be a gentleman in public.