I still have a miserable cold. Training is on minimum – although we get to work a bit more on hand signalling, I don’t have the energy for much. Fenris is understandably somewhat bored. I do take him for a morning walk every day, but they are probably shorter than he likes. On the plus side, he’s learning to sleep through my coughing in the day time, which is kind of impressive.

Come 2 – We had a very nice one Tuesday. He saw a cat some 20 meters away, and he was jumping up and down at the end of the leash. I did my big arm recall signal, and he actually turned away from the cat and came with his nose to my fingertip! Loads of rewards for that one. (On the other hand, later on the walk we came across some frozen poop, and I discovered how literally ‘shitty’ his Drop command is…)

Lazy Leash 2 – Collar pressure, one session. He does it, but it doesn’t seem to be his favoured exercise. Probably because there is a so called P- component to it.

The four quadrants of learning R+, R-, P+, P-

R stands for Reinforcement, P for Punishment, + is something added, – is something removed. (With the caveat that I’m not a professional, and have not studied it professionally.)

• R+ is the main aim. The creature does something right and gets a reward. A reinforcer is added, and the behaviour increases.
• R- means something it likes gets removed. Taking away computer time from a child to hopefully decrease some unwanted behaviour.
• P+ is added punishment. Speaks for itself, and the emotional fallout of fear and unhappiness is enough to avoid it.
• P- is removing something unpleasant. Pressure on the collar is relieved when he takes a step towards me. The idea being that this will decrease the ‘move away’ behaviour and increase the ‘stay near’ behaviour.

I’m in two minds about the whole exercise – on the one hand I’ll go R+ as far as I possibly can, but the author and her book are very well respected in the positive trainer community, and both the LL collar pressure exercise and the excuse me/back up away exercise have P- components. Awesome Obedience has another back-up exercise instead that focuses on the dog choosing to move to a target behind him, instead of being mentally ‘pushed’ away from the current position. Most R+ loose leash training involves not coming to the pressure point in the first place – but life happens, cats happen, exciting poop happens. And what does the dog (and the trainer!) do then? One dog trainer (Denise Fenzi of FDSA ) describes her philosophy as ‘kind and efficient’, and I can get behind that.

Tricks – Figure Eight without luring, a second of Sit Pretty, starting jump over my arm when held against a wall.

Distance 2 – Reworked the inside doors. Good boy.

Communication 2 – ‘Excuse me’ is fast learned and useful in some simple settings for the time being; such as not poking people at the dinner table.

Obedience

Continue Sit-Down for the first whole week. Another session of position change at heel, but it’s not really where I want it yet.

Formal retrieve; Holding the Dummy stick. Sorry Fenris, you just get to bite over it, then I click and you take the treat. I know you’re aching to grab the stick and run off with it to play and chew. Since he doesn’t get to do that, the duration of his hold is about 1/2 of a second. Maybe we need even better treats to match the value of the stick. Maybe I should try reverse luring. I think I did that some months ago, and it worked then.