<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Young Charlie has been in obedience classes for the last four months, and last Tuesday he took the big test that will clear him for going into pet therapy training next winter. It's with enormous relief that I'm able to announce that he passed his test and is now an official Canine Good Citizen. </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I'm very, very proud of him. I knew he could do it, it was just a matter of him wanting to. The week before the test, Charlie was feeling puppyish again and I was hoping it was just a passing thing. That it was a bad dress rehearsal that would lead to an excellent opening night performance. On top of his periodic immature behavior, Charlie also has trouble with anticipating what I'm going to tell him to do. If he thinks I'm going to ask him to come, then he gets up and heads toward me before I tell him to. His sit-stay is good about 80 percent of the time because he's prone to making assumptions about what I'm going to tell him to do next.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Then there's the whole roll-over thing. This winter I taught Charlie how to roll over on command, which he loves doing because all of the humans in his obedience course who saw him do it told him how adorable he is and then gave him treats. So when Charlie doesn't feel like following through on a command, he rolls over and looks up at me from his prone position. Then he rolls over again. He'll do three or four roll-overs, stopping after each one to see if he'll get a treat. He's very cute and it's hard not to laugh at him--and he knows it. </div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">But fortunately, on the night of his big test Charlie felt like listening and following the directions he received, not the directions he thought he was about to receive. He paid close attention to me the whole time and stuck right by my side on a loose leash. There were two moments of suspense, one where he wanted to greet the tester in an overly friendly way when she tried to brush him and one where his bottom started to rise up off the floor as I was walking away from him after I told him to sit and stay. But it all ended okay. I dropped down to the floor to successfully distract Charlie while he was being brushed. Then later I caught him just as he was breaking his sit and I was able to quickly return to him and tell him again to sit and stay before he got too far out of position.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 17px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="4" style="font: 14.0px Helvetica">The tester was the same one who did our Elsinore's CGC test and also taught Elsinore's pet therapy course and tested her for that. She's very tough, which means when you pass her test, you've worked for it, it hasn't just been given to you. But she's also extremely fair and does whatever she can within the confines of the rules to help a dog do its best on the test. </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">So now I'm waiting for Charlie's CGC certificate to arrive so it can go in a frame on his crate, just like Elsinore's. And I'm waiting for Charlie to do just a little more maturing before I enroll him in the pet therapy course. After he settles a bit more, I think he'll be wonderful at pet therapy. In addition to being unfazed by sudden noises or wheeled things, he's very outgoing and has never met a lap he hasn't wanted to try to climb into for a cuddle. He excels at cuddling and is quite generous about sharing his snuggles with total strangers as well as with his own family. He's an indiscriminate hound.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Unlike Elsinore before she took the CGC test, Charlie kept me guessing the whole way through that last obedience course--would he or wouldn't he feel like doing well on the test? He felt like doing a bang-up job on it--and he did. Whew!</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Elizabeth</div>
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