Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Weekend
People-skills Handling and grooming BWS	People-skills Paw FWS	Zen, My Eyes Chin BWS	People-skills Zen, Look at bowl Pivot	Paw Chin FWS	Family fun.

Terms and conditions… (criteria, what I’m aiming for, etc, etc)

People-skills; this is all his slow counter-conditioning (yes, yes, I’ll be making a post on training terms and behaviourism terms. I’m an absolute lay-person, but still.).

• For this Monday, it means going for a walk where I’m pretty certain there will be human beings. Seeing at a distance, looking at them and back at me, maybe greeting nicely if it’s someone we know.
• Tuesday will be his first lesson at an intro course to Rally Obedience. Can he focus on working with me while other people and dogs are present?
• Thursday is another walk. Maybe meet his behaviourist again if it fits everyone’s schedules.

Handling and grooming;

• We are working on a start-button for using the grooming glove. I hold it up, he paws or noses it, I do a couple of strokes, he gets a treat. I suspect this will take some time. He’s smart – but it takes consistency, and that is not one of my strong suits.
• Secondly we are working on a chin-rest as prerequisite for putting on a muzzle. We don’t want him eating more rocks. Current criteria is ‘open or closed muzzle in my hand, he puts chin there for a second or two’. I want to shape him putting his nose into it while it lies in my lap, so I have my hands free to clasp it (next shaping step afterwards).
• Somewhere down the line; washing his butt with a cloth, general bathing, getting to clean and brush his belly. One trick he resists learning is ‘roll over’. It’s his tummy, damnit!

BWS and FWS; Backwards and Forwards Weight Shifts. These are from the Awesome Obedience book (see Resources). He gets the FWS much better than the BWS. A good 5 cm stretch over the edge of the staircase landing. This week I continue practicing, getting fluency (also for my treat delivery and eyeballing distances!). The BWS needs a wide, thick target of some sort to stand his hindlegs on. Maybe try a thick doormat, and just see how we fare.

Paw; from the same book. Run out, whack the target with a paw, run back. My main head scratcher here is finding a non-slip target. Fenris will run – given hamburger or similar; otherwise a power walk is all he’ll normally give me – but if the target slips, he’s likely to develop some aversion to the process, in addition to possibly injuring himself. Current distance 2 meters. Given a good target, I’m sure we can practice increasing that. May have to do it outside – inside is all hard wood floors.

Zen, My Eyes are Up Here, and Look at Bowl; from the same book.

• Criteria here are duration, duration, duration. And maybe some really easy nose-targets before being sent to the bowl. These three all involve a bowl of treats on the ground.
• Zen is a marker that tells him the behaviour was correct and that he can go eat whatever is in that bowl. Basically a specialised click (as in clicker-training).
• My Eyes are Up Here isn’t normally a verbal cue; this is just me putting a cute name to standing with my hands on my stomach while he border-collie-stares me in the eyes. We can do about 3 seconds. Then I give the Zen marker.
• Same with Look at Bowl, except I’m pointing two fingers at the bowl, and he stares at it for 2-3 seconds until I give the marker. This should also be a better foundation for us to go back to the Agility Right from the Start book afterwards.

Chin; placing his chin heavily in my hand. Partly grooming-skill, partly increasing duration. Haven’t timed it – but also probably 2-3 seconds. He’s young and patience isn’t in his vocabulary yet. Another criteria we should work on is a nice heavy, closed mouth rest. Grins and licks are cute, but I don’t really want it here!

Pivot; he does quite decently with it – I’ve been working on it for several months, but I want to revisit it, and take it back to basics with the Awesome Obedience book. Front feet on cookie-tin (or maybe something larger these days – he has big paws), and turning fluently both directions. Criteria; fluency.