Showing posts with label intermediate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label intermediate. Show all posts

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Graduation week and gentle leaders

So Harley and Ace both graduated from their Beginner classes this week! :) Harley graduated Monday- which was also my 1 year wedding anniversary- and Ace graduated Wednesday. It was interesting to see how the two different trainers did their graduations and it was also neat to see how the pups did on Week 6 as compared to Week 1. Major improvements in my opinion. I got some really cute pictures of both of them wearing little graduation hats!








Harley's trainer/my trainer said that Harley is ready for the Intermediate class as far as knowing all of the behaviors, but not ready in regards to her reactions around other dogs and people. She still gets super excited and barks and jumps on people. So, the trainer recommended that we get a gentle leader for Harley before we put her in intermediate. So, the other day I bought a gentle leader- well, technically it was a Top Paw head collar, which I liked better because 1) it was cheaper, 2) it has padding on the nose strap, and 3) it attaches to the collar as a nice little safety feature. She's not too fond of it, of course, but we're working on it. It does make her walk better, we just can't stop for long or she'll try and get it off.

The intermediate class with Harley's trainer isn't until November, so that gives me time to work with her more and get her ready for it. Ace's trainer is a little more lax in the criteria for letting dogs into the Intermediate class. I taught her intermediate class this week, and I think neither of the dogs should be in it- personally, I think Ace is better than them because one of them won't even sit reliably. And dogs should at LEAST be able to do that before moving into the intermediate class.

That was the first intermediate class I've taught- and it wasn't that bad. I have my own intermediate class starting on Tuesday, so I'll have to let y'all know how it goes. Hopefully the dogs in that class will at least be able to know how to sit. So far three are signed up, and I've only taught one of them previously. So at least I know one of them knows the behaviors.

Well, it's getting late and I have to get up early to go to work!
More to come, and hopefully this time I won't wait so long before the next post.
Thanks for pawsing,
L

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Resignation, craziness, and more craziness!

So... the trainer whose classes I covered last week resigned yesterday. With no advance notice. So I came into work expecting to be doing customer service, cash register, and trying to sell classes and stuff and ended up having to teach class again. But before that I spent almost 3 hours on the computer just trying to fix the schedule. I had to try and cancel some of K's classes and switch the name of which trainer was teaching it for others... and I wanted to reorganize the calendar so the classes were in order by time of day. What I mean is, our monthly calendar has spaces for a class to go- 8 per day and 16 on Saturdays and Sundays. What would make sense is for all the classes to be in order on each day. Like have 5:00 be first, 6:00 be second, and 7:00 be third. That's the way I was trained to do it and that's the way our store's other trainer, S has been doing it. K, however, would just pick a slot that wasn't already taken- so the calendar would read 10:00, 4:00, 12:00, 5:00, 2:00, etc. It was one big jumbled mess that I found very confusing to read- and very hard to read quickly. So if I just had to glance down to see what time my next engagement was it was impossible to do! I couldn't just glance at it, I had to study it for a minute to make sure I wasn't skipping something!

So that was part of the craziness. Then, as I was rescheduling stuff, I noticed that K had left me a note telling me what time all the classes I needed to cover this week start. There was a week 1 puppy class she said started at 6:00. The master calendar said it started at 7:00 and the computer said it started at 7:00 but her attendance log also said 6:00, so I didn't know if she'd changed the time... Then, some of the enrollment forms (forms the customer fills out saying what class and time etc) said 7:00 and two of them said 6:00! So I had to talk to the manager and figure out what to do... and then I had to call the two pet parents whose forms said 6:00 and see if they could come in at 7:00. One said no, so I put her in a Sunday 10:00am class. The other one wanted to be put into a different class anyway, so I put her and her 3 puppies (!) into the Sunday class as well. So instead of the 7:00 class having 6 dogs in it, it had 2. And only one showed up. It was totally awkward to give my big long "day one" speech to one person. I told her she could switch into a different class if she wanted but unfortunately that's the only time that works for her. I felt bad because she was looking forward to the social aspect of the class - for her dog - and having only one other dog in it is kind of not that great. So, I have to call that pet parent to see when he wants to schedule a makeup and if he's going to make it to the rest of the classes etc.

Which reminds me, there was a man that called the other day to apologize for missing S's class that morning so she told me to schedule a makeup for him and there was another class covering the same material a couple days later- at 8:00pm - so I told him about it. And he thought I meant 8:00 am because apparently that's when he showed up and he was very unhappy and apparently talked to the store manager for like 45 minutes. The manager just confirmed my impression of him - he thinks very highly of himself (only told me over the phone that he was a doctor about 8 times) and thinks that other people are stupid and that anything that goes wrong is someone else's fault. So the manager basically told me that he now thinks I'm a complete idiot and that it was all my fault- he wouldn't give up until the manager pretty much told him that she was going to have a long talk with me about it and "take care of it." Man, people are weird. I know I am. Hahaha.

Oh, remembered another crazy thing... as I was doing scheduling, I discovered that we have 5 intermediate classes starting over the period of about 7 days. And we should have one starting every other week. And unfortunately I couldn't just cancel some of them because there's someone signed up for almost all of them! Which is weird because it's so far in advance. So I have to let S handle that one because I think one of those classes is hers and she'd be the one taking K's Intermediate students since I'm not comfortable with that material yet. But man that was a shocker to find!

So this week I'm now working Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday... which sucks because my husband is off Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday for Labor Day weekend. And since I don't work Monday at all or Tuesday during the day- it would've been nice to have a couple days with him in a row! I'm not supposed to work Saturdays- I told the managers many times that I want one day on the weekend to have off since he works weekdays and goes to bed early. And since I work weeknights and weekends, I would hardly ever see him if I didn't have one weekend day off. So my schedule was supposed to be Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday. And once Harley and Ace graduate, then it can be Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday.

But that reminds me that I'm still not done scheduling. I came home tonight and found some I need to fix. Somehow with this craziness, I ended up scheduling myself to work 6 days a week in October.

Anyway, that's enough for now.
Nighty night y'all.
<3 L