Winning a Trophy

It had been almost a year since we got our little shih tzu. He was fully trained but he still had the puppy aggressiveness that some of the little dogs have. At night, as we would sit down to watch TV, he would start to nip at us, because we didn’t pay any attention to him. We tried everything to make him stop. Nothing worked.

As the days went by, I received the local adult education magazine and noticed that they were offering a training class for dogs from 6 to 12 months old. I decided that it would be a good idea to take him to this class. So I went on ahead and registered him.

The first day came when I had to take him to the school for the training. The class was held in the gym of the school. The first day that we got there, he basically, jumped up into my arms and was afraid to go into the gym. There were a lot of other dogs there, small, medium and large. Little Nappy was quite afraid being there. The instructor told me that I am not supposed to hold him in my arms during the training class. So I put him down on the floor, but he didn’t’ leave my side. He was practically trembling from fear.

We started the exercises and he was doing well. In the beginning, of course, he wouldn’t do all the exercises and he would put his front paws up on my legs for me to pick him up. The instructors helped me along, and eventually, he started to obey and did all the exercises. Of course, he was always afraid of the other dogs, and if any of them came close to him, he would hide behind my legs.

On the second to last day of the class, we had to do a little exercise, in which the dog that would do it first would get a trophy. We had practiced this exercise in the previous classes but with a leash. This time it would be without the leash. We had to walk around the gym with the leash over our shoulders, tied to the dog, but we were not supposed to pull on it or show any type of discipline through the leash. As soon as the instructor shouted “STOP” the first dog that would sit on his behind, without any pull from the leash, would be the winner. So, we went around the gym and as soon as the instructor shouted “STOP” little Nappy put his behind on the floor and sat. I was looking around to see which of the dogs sat down first, when I heard the instructor to say that we had a winner and she pointed at my little Nappy. I was flabbergasted. I didn’t expect him to do it. I never thought that he would get a trophy.

All excited, I picked up his trophy at the end of the class, went home and happily I announced the good news to my husband. Our little Nappy was an obedient and well trained dog.

Since the last class was close to Halloween, I ended up dressing him up as a Super dog and took his picture with his trophy on his side.