Orion's 2nd 2nd L2 class

This Pic is on Orion's adoption day, 2/20/05 in Tampa, FL.
Yes, I do mean 2nd 2nd. We are in week 2 of our second go round of L2 Obedience at Gemini Dog Training, in Littleton, MA. We aren't doing the class again because Orion is slow, we are doing it again to get more practice and to get better working around large dogs. Orion is afraid of a lot of large dogs (especially in the training environment for some reason!), and he pre-emptively tells them to back up. Yes, I do mean that he snaps at them, especially the closer they get, especially when training, especially at Gemini. He has some large dog friends that he's fine with, and most dogs that he meets he's perfectly fine with. I think he has actually improved alot, cause I can remember when I first got him, I still had my collie and he was snappy with him, and other lg. dogs. So overall I think we have made leaps and bounds toward changing what big dogs mean to him. We've used alot of classical conditioning to do this and clicker training. It seems that Orion especially gets worked up at class when other dogs are barking, panting, playing or being really rewarded and praised. He also doesn't usually do well heeling in a group, but last nite I think he was awesome!!! Just last night at class we were working next to a very nice, young, smart, but barky black standard poodle, and everytime the dog barked, I fed Orion a piece of hotdog. I want him to associate barking (something that he currently isn't comfortable with) with rewards and wonderful things happening. So after doing this for a few mins. , everytime the dog barked, or any dog barked he would look at me to get his treat, instead of me having to just practically put it in his mouth. He started offering me the "look" behavior all on his own, which was a very nice choice, compared to some other choices he could have made, like snapping or exploding with barks in the direction of the offending barking dog. :) So progress comes in little steps all the time. :) I know that every choice he makes on his own, that is not a defensive/fearful display, helps him build his confidence. So we keep at it. He keeps improving and we keep going. We will work through his little issues, we already have made progress, and keep getting to move onto to more fun, self-confidence building activities. So yeah!! Overall, I was very proud of how Orion handled himself last nite. He was markedly better than last week. This second L2 is more crowded than our first, 6 dogs including us (st. poodle, choc. lab, lab/shep mix, pit mix, jrt), last time it was only 4 dogs (berner, greyhound and german shepherd). So next week will hopefully be better, next week I will regulate my hot dog pieces better (he was full with 15-0 mins left in class nite, last week he was full with 30 mins to go), which is hard cause there are so many things that I need to reward him for, it's like I feed him non-stop for an hr. so I can hopefully change his view of the environment and dogs to a positive one. It's hard to cut up the right size pieces, they have to big enough to be a good reward, but have to be small enough so that a 10 lb dog isn't full before the hr.'s up!!! *sigh* It must be so much easier to train dogs that don't get full!!! I better get me a bigger dog. :) Okay, thanks for listening, I think this is enough writing for my first real training entry. I'll include more me and Orion background later, and get more specific with my training details later too. Thanks for reading. :)