AKC Canine Good Citizen (CGC) Title*

It was a big day for Guinnes as his CGC test was scheduled today for 11:00 am. We’ve been working on this for almost a month and I was really worried that something silly would happen and we’d fail.

The day started bright and early with a bath. Guinness was less than amused. Especially when the hair dryer came out! But it was worth it because he looked so nice and pretty afterwards. Even his trainer, Felicia, commented on how nice he looked. Actually, pretty much everyone tells us how beautiful Guinness is, even when he’s covered in mud.

At 10:30 we arrived at Sierra Canine Academy so that we could be all set for the test. Guinness was super excited to be there (he LOVES his trainer). Usually when he goes, he gets to be off leash and have fun running around with the other dogs so he wasn’t very happy when he got put in a crate. Especially when he had to be there for quite a while while we waited for our turn.

Finally it was only a few dogs until us so I went and got Guinness out of the kennel so he could calm down and go to the bathroom.

Waiting as patiently as we can for our turn.

The test went pretty well. It consists of meeting the evaluator and introducing her to your dog. They pet the dog and groom him to make sure he’s been taken care of and that he won’t bite anyone’s hand off randomly. 🙂 Then we demonstrated walking calmly on a leash. Guinness did great at this except that he really wanted to go see Eric who was sitting on the sidelines.

Demonstrating good manners on the leash.

You need to demonstrate a sit, stay, down and recall. Guinness did okay with that. Usually he’s great with his stay but he got a little distracted today. But we recovered and went on.

“Stay!”

Guinness thought about running right past me to Eric but I didn’t give him the chance.

The last parts of the test were dealing with a crowd, being polite when coming across a person with a dog, not overreacting to distractions, and being polite while being watched by someone else… for THREE minutes! It felt like forever but Guinness passed that one easily.

This was a very long three minutes but Guinness was a good boy.

And with that, we were done! Guinness passed and as soon as the paperwork becomes available, he will officially be Guinness vom Schlossfelsen CGC.

What a good dog!

 

 

*Becomes a title on January 1st, 2013!