Do obedience classes increase the bond with owner and dog?
Yes. Anything you do on a one-on-one basis with your dog will increase the bond. I always found I had a great rapport with the hounds I used to show, and likewise with the ones I bred from. In fact I had one who because she had an abscess at the back of her eye at a very early age, and had to have it removed (before we discovered what was actually wrong with her eye) was not able to be shown, and we never bred from her either. She was absolutely no trouble within the pack (although she ruled!) and just lived her life until she finally died at almost 15. I always regretted that somehow, with all the other things that were going on, with the others, at the time, apart from her early problems with the eye, she just came and went. I’d done nothing that involved just her and me. She obviously had a presence within the Pack, to the others, though because for the longest time after she’d gone, nobody would take her place on the mat in front of the fire. It was almost as if they felt that she’
