Week 41 Review:

Heeling and Formal obedience

His laterals are a mess. He’d rather turn on a dime than step out with the hind legs, so I started working it as an extension of a Front, which means loads of reinforcement for facing me first, then circling, fading pivot, and then stepping out. Which ran into the snag of “Pivot? That means spin like a top into heel position, right???” After a couple of sessions I finally managed to click and treat several times in a row for simply standing still on the pivot, facing me, and then taking a couple of steps in each direction (while actually keeping his paws on the platform – maybe I need a taller one to remind him).

Home Obedience and Steps to Success

Focus – with treat on the floor, 15 seconds. By Jove, I think he’s ‘got it’!

Recalls and distractions – inside with treat.

Distance – A little bit of outside work

Settle – More or less getting the cue, sometimes offering, sometimes there’s a lot of waving paws.

Jump – Angling the jump, indicating direction with my body language. There is no doubt that he enjoys it. The ‘Hup’ cue was nice to use also in tricks.

Trick training

Working the jump over leg, attempting reverse luring for Sit Pretty – but this one is still limited by his core muscle strength, slalom in other places, high five with either and both paws (unreliable). Also some work at doing the high five between my legs, in preparation for converting the cue from (hand+word) to (lift foot). He has fun. I have fun.

Social

He was utterly exhausted after the Rally session Wednesday, and snoozed on the couch between morning sniffy walk at 8:30 am, and an evening walk at 5 pm. It’s not that the sessions were very long, but the social exposure is obviously hard work for him.

Week 42: Plans

Adapting the original plan somewhat, to reduce the number of different skills involved.

• Lazy Leash, Zen, Recalls, Focus, Settle, Handling on random rotation daily. (LL, Z, R, F all with distraction criteria; S as duration and cue; Handling basics.)
• Monday review day; cone-to-cone, right pivot, cold testing old levels.
• Tuesday and Wednesday progress skills; Sidestepping.
• Thursday free day; tricks, and, if we do Rally Wednesday, he probably wants the nap time.
• Friday and Weekend new skill for the coming month; position change sit to down.

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

Handling 2, step 1 is “The dog allows you to touch his head, tail and feet.” Head might be easy – the other parts probably need more relaxing work. (And we are talking ‘allow’ as in ‘let me rest and enjoy life, while the human does the weird stuff’, not ‘I’m ignoring the nasty stuff while my nose is stuffed down a peanut butter jar’.) Head involves ears, nose, cheeks, top, chin. Feet are all the way from the shoulders/hips down. Tail is all the tail.

Current tricks we are working on; slalom, high five, paw lift in time with feet, jump over legs and arms, sit pretty. Settle as a part of play dead/ roll over.