Week 40 Review:

Heeling and Formal obedience

Practice, practice, practice, around the cones. Turns, and lines and keeping up with me. At heel, sitting, he can give me at least 8 second focus. His fancy Tucked Sit is still in need of some TLC. I’ve been sloppy with actually working it and getting enough repetitions in.

Home Obedience and Steps to Success

Focus – with cheese; 3-4 seconds

Zen Traps – been working to set up controlled exercises where he is out of the room as I place cloths and other interesting stuff on the floor, and then cueing Leave It well in advance of his approach. Liver treats for reward.

Recalls and distractions – at home, inside, he can pass a low value treat, although with some hesitation. Practice, practice, practice.

Distance – started working with the cone in a doorway to get the ‘go into next room and turn to face me’ skill, and generalising to several doors, and fading the actual cone.

Settle – taking a step back to fix the actual cue. I realised I’m still luring the behaviour, and that’s kind of level 1, step 1… His stays are great once he’s there. So a couple of sessions to back-chain from the final step of ‘side of head on floor’, ‘high head-> side of head on floor’, ‘normal down (both elbows on the floor) -> sideways with high head-> floor’, etc.

Target – doors closing make a *bump*, and that is Worrisome. Using the paw is a little easier, but he’s not out of the woods on this one yet. High value treats and loads of praise.

Trick training

Started retraining the slalom down the hallway. It’s true – dogs are extremely context aware. He had no idea what I was on about when I tried cueing it in a new place!

I’ve entered the first Trick Challenge with Spin/Twist (I actually got a counterclockwise Twist on camera! They are … unreliable.), Bow, and Pattycake / High Five. The last one was a bit of a so-so. Right, good. Left, good. Both – uhm, let’s try eating mummy’s hand instead! We’ll see if it’s a pass. If nothing else, maybe someone gets a good laugh.

Social

Green reaction (Concern, but not stiff. Observation only.) to someone hanging up their washing some 20 meters from the road – and then stayed at that level as we also noticed someone halfways behind a house 20 meters in the other direction. I suspect his main concern was that there was something he needed to keep an eye on in two different directions. He was willing to walk on when I asked him.

Yellow/orange reaction (stiff, pulling, but able to listen to me) to the neighbour 15+ meters ahead of us, getting her mail. I’ll call both those wins. Not because he was reaction free – but because the reaction was manageable and an improvement on the usual.

My daughter had a friend for sleep-over this weekend. Fenris is not happy about a stranger in his home. They were mostly in the office or her room, and every time they showed up in the hall outside the living room (closed glass door – F can see but not come near), I threw a bunch of liver treats on the floor and cued Find. I’ll call it a red/orange.

It took two bread meals for him to learn to predict ‘strange human picks up cheese slicer’ -> ‘I get cheese’. By Sunday breakfast he was bouncing between green-yellow and red. Able to take cues from everyone, but suddenly getting anxiety attacks in the middle of it. He stayed on leash, with an adult holding him in the living room area, while others were at the table.

Some benefits in the situation; it’s my child’s friend. I am not required to entertain her beyond basic care and feeding, so I can focus entirely on Fenris. The girls normally stay in the office or my daughter’s room. This means Fenris is free to roam the living room (closed door, still). And both adults are home – so everyone gets plenty of breaks from the situation.

But F is stressed, I can’t imagine what his kortisol-levels are at. He has trouble napping and trouble walking away from things. I have a loose appointment with an aquaintance about stranger-training next week, but apart from that, I think I’ll keep him isolated for a few days – just to calm down.

Week 41: Plans

• Lazy Leash, Zen, Recalls and Focus run through the whole month. This week we will also work on
• Distance (well, we’re mostly at the end of this. Just some generalising left to do.)
• Settle (perfect the cue, and continue working up to 1 minute relaxes with play between)
• Start Jumps (can’t imagine he’ll have much problems with this)
• Lateral Movements aka Sideways

I assumed we would be done with Targeting, but the snags came a bit out of the blue. Noting it down for mop-up week at the end of the month. Maybe he’ll have processed his fears by then, even.

Also, note to self: Start having longer sessions on each thing. Sometimes I’m just doing a handful of repetitions and it’s not really enough to actually learn and progress.

exercise	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Week-end
Awesome Heeling	Cone-to-Cone	Laterals	L	CtC	L
Focus	heeling	treats	outside	heeling	treats	outside
Home-obedience	Lazy Leash	Zen Traps	Recall and Distractions	LL	ZT	R and D
Steps to Success	Jumps Distance	D Settle	S J	J D	D S	S

Wednesday there might be self-training rally at one of the local-ish clubs. We’ll see if we go and how he is.