English Setter Grayson

[Hixie]

Grayson has been with us for about 9 weeks now and he's about 17 weeks old. When we brought him home he weighed 14.5 pounds and now he is just a little over 30 pounds. He's coming along nicely and while full of energy and a bit mischievous, he obeys basic commands well. He's good with "Whoa", "Come", "Sit", "Stay", but more work is needed when there are distractions. At times he will linger a bit at the "Come" command, but usually a second command is all that is needed. I'll be working on that some more with him as well.

Most recently I've been working on the "fetch" command and it took him some time to figure out what I was trying to do, but he's got it now. He will chew beef bones so hard you can hear him from upstairs, but he retrieves toys to hand with a pretty soft mouth.

Still having some trouble with "heel", he just wants to be somewhere else. Does anyone have any experience with training their dogs to heel? Feel free to chime in with your thoughts. We just got a suggestion to try a collar called The Gentle Leader. It has a strap for the neck and another that goes over the snout. They are joined under the jaw and that is where you connect your lead. The old farmers' adage for farm animals..."control the head, control the animal" I guess is the theory behind this collar. Not sure if this is the way to go. He is still pretty young so I am not too worried about it, maybe just more time is needed.

Anyway, here are some recent photos: