[RKDinOKC]

Good Morning.

My first golden, Penny was sooo smart. And more important downright eager to please. One only had to show her something new twice at the most. More often once and trained, sometimes she learned watching others. At a back yard party once people were getting beers out of an ice chest. Looked at her, pointed at the ice chest and told her to fetch me a beer. She trotted over to the chest, opened it, pulled out a beer and brought it to me. The rest of the evening she was fetching beers for people at the party. I never really trained her, she was just copying what she saw people doing where I pointed.

My second golden, Camber was not so smart and not at all eager to please. She was an alpha dog too. What makes an alpha dog is they have their own agenda and are very very stubborn to do whatever it is on their agenda. If she was doing something I didn't like I could distract her away from it for over an hour. But once I stopped the distraction she would immediately go right back to whatever it was.

Pepper is smarter than Camber, but not as eager to please as Penny was. Main thing I am working on with all the stuff I am training her is to look at and pay attention to me. Example is playing fetch. Penny would look at me and wait for me to say fetch, even if saying fetch was after the object had already hit the ground. Camber would start off in the direction of where you were going to throw it, then turn and say I'm ready before expecting me to throw. Pepper, as soon as you put your arm back to throw goes down like a cat ready to pounce looking towards where she thinks it is going to land and waits for the object to fall out of the sky.