Sasha (female American Mastiff) just turned 8 ½ months old and we are going to try for our CGN on September 11. CGN is the Canadian equivalent to the CGC in the States.

One small issue I’m having with her; she gets too excited when she meets new people. I’ve been teaching her to sit at my side and then having a person approach her rather than letting her go to see the person. If the person stays directly in front of her, she will hold her sit but will be doing a full body wiggle. If they come beside her, she starts leaning her shoulders into them and then the front feet sneak over until she is leaning hard into them but is still maintaining her sit.

I’m not sure how to handle this but at 135 lbs her leaning on people is not an acceptable behaviour I want continuing but I don't want her associating meeting new people with a correction.

Please keep in mind this is a family pet and won’t be doing any serious obedience work so I don’t need perfection but I would like to have a well behaved dog (and to pass our CGN)

I'm not sure if I've explained it well so ask any questions you want.

 Quote: Debbie Martin

I’m not sure how to handle this but at 135 lbs her leaning on people is not an acceptable behaviour I want continuing but I don't want her associating meeting new people with a correction.

Why not? That sounds adorable. :wink:

Does she have to maintain the sit as part of the test or can she down? You don't have a heck of a long time to work on this but I would start working on using the person going to her side as a signal to turn towards you and then mark and reward.

Something like; person steps to her side you say her name she looks at you mark/reward...repeat a million times until she is turning toward you as soon as the person steps to her side fade out using her name. Add duration to how long she has to be in contact with you before you mark/reward. After practicing duration for a while you can probably stop the sneaky lean to with a verbal correction. And at 8 months she'll probably get it for 5 minutes and then forget. That just means she's normal!

Have fun! I wouldn't worry too much about passing it just more as a goal and if at first you don't succeed try, try again.
Goodluck!!

At this point in her training I think people greeting her may be to much of a distraction in her training. Back up and proof the sit at lower levels before you add people to it.
At 8 1/2 months old a Mastiff is pretty much a dufus.

a LARGE dufus!! i too would back up, then when adding ppl to the equation, would have them sidestep if she tries the "leaning" business. i don't want little-bitty Ike leaning on me or anyone, much less a LARGE dog, lol.

Koenig is a leaner.... but only 80lbs. I back up, or have friends back up suddenly. He's also a duffs, and will fall right over on his side.

I agree with Bob- sounds like you should (quickly) back up in training(haha), and work on proofing the sit, and gradually add distractions in, including greeting people.

Her sits are quite good already; our latest practice place is a skateboard park. Right now, we go when it's fairly quiet but my goal is to eventually practice there on a busy Saturday afternoon.

I know this is short notice to try our CGN but I just learned they were testing close to where I live so I figured we'd give it a try and then I'll have a good idea of what I need to focus my training on. Our trainer wants us to consider working towards our CD but I'm not sure I can devote that much time to training right now. We'll see how the CGN goes and decide from there.

Sheila, I like your idea of teaching Sasha to look to me when someone approaches her side. I'll be working on that after I practice more sits under higher distractions first.

Bob, you're right; a young Mastiff is a dufus with the attention span of a gnat, but we're working on that. Because she is so large, sometimes I forget how young she is, and expect more from her than I really should.