Well, the Christmas season kept me away from making a blog entry, though I DID manage to keep up some training with the dogs. I try to take every opportunity to work on SOMETHING when I am with them, no matter how small, whether it is simple manners or the foundation for agility/obedience.
For instance, this morning I have Billie inside with me. I have limited what areas of the house she can access, put the mat down near me in this room, and set the treat box within easy reach of my hand. One of the things she needs to work on is settling down. She is a constantly in motion dog. Josh and Fyre are happy to lie down wherever I am, and if they are outside they may play for a while but then they will just lie near the door til Chris or I reappears. Billie will rarely do this - most often if I glance out the window she is patrolling the yard, sniffing out anything interesting, playing in the pond or with a toy. Inside, she will trot between the rooms, play a game of 'step on the cat' with Izzy (Flick doesn't put up with such nonsense) or find something else to poke her nose into.
She still has those options available to her. She can wander around, get a drink, do whatever, but when she comes onto the mat she gets a treat. When she lies down on the mat she gets a treat. Once she has been lying on the mat for a while she gets another treat. If she were wildly distracted and running round like a maniac I would probably limit her to just this room, or even put a lead on. However, she has been quite good so far, even with Izzy rolling over practically under her nose! Her duration is still quite short, but I am pleased that she is offering to lie down quietly of her own choice. The OTHER thing I am hoping will come from this is a very positive association with getting on the mat. Useful for targeting work when we come to that.
As for the boys, I have been trying to get in a minimum of two 2x2 sessions per day, though it has been quite warm the last few days and I won't do too many repetitions in the hot sun as their enthusiasm drops off more quickly and higher percentage of errors inevitably ensues. However, that said, Josh is doing very well - the second set of 2x2s is now almost straight line - I have left the entry more open as he still misses that occasionally. His right entries have now gone from being the better side to the less good side (probably because I did all that work on improving his left-sided entries!) But that said, this is mostly from EXTREME angles on the right, and on re-attempt he usually gets it right. It is all learning.
Fyre struggles if I miss a day's training. Currently we have had to get back to widening the gap between the two sets so I can build more value for the first two poles. I did persist for several sessions giving him the chance to improve and start hitting the entries again on his own, but even very simply entries he was now missing and often heading just for the second set, or entering at a random spot. So I decided rather than persist with him at such a low success rate we would go back and do LOTS of reinforcing for getting the first entry correct. Once he can get that from all angles at a high success rate I will move the two sets closer together again.
2x2s is the main thing we have been working on, though I now have several more DVDs that I am working through, including Susan Salo's Puppy Jumping and Rachel Sanders' Reliable Running A-Frames. I have finished the A-Frame one and really like the method, so I am definitely going to attempt this with my own dogs. A running A-frame/scramble was definitely in my training plans, I was just waiting to find the right weay to teach it, so very happy there. The puppy jumping is also going to give me a chance to do a LOT of groundwork with the dogs before they have to worry about height, but it does also provide exercises for introducing the height as well. Now I just need to get to a hardware store and get myself the gear I need to start the training!
In other areas, we have started some work outside the backyard (an area where I have been more lax than I should have been). This currently consists of me taking the dogs across the road to the park. Every bit of a walk is a training opportunity... when we leave the house, I expect them not to pull. To this end we do lots of stop/start, U turns, multiple quick 90 degree turns and so on. Josh and Fyre are generally very good (Josh expecially is excellent). I can walk them both down the street to the park gate with them nicely at my side on loose leads. They do tend to be a BIT more distracted once we actually get into the park, but then we simply work through some quick turns again and once they settle we do some work. At the moment with the boys, one gets put in a down stay and the other gets worked for a few minutes. These are just little things, since they have done very little outside the backyard (bad, bad handler!
This is also a good chance for the dogs to practice their down stay whilst another dog is working near them. Both dogs have a good down stay, though Josh needs more work with distractions. I am very alert as to whether other people or dogs may be entering the park, at which point I would take hold of the lead so he doesn't have a chance to bolt off for some doggy play. I use some of the techniques in the book Control Unleashed (an excellent read) such as marking him for looking at a person or another dog. Incidentally, I am also using this with Billie who has a tendency to bark at other dogs that bark at her from behind a fence - last night a dog up on a balcony was barking down at her, so we stopped and every time she was able to look at the dog (without barking back/jumping etc) she was rewarded. She settled amazingly quickly, so this is something we will continue to work on.
Josh and Billie are also working recalls - whilst both are OK, they are nowhere near as good as I want (again, bad trainer), as I want them to leave whatever they are doing and come back right away, wherever they are. To this end, neither of them gets leash-free runs currently. I have a long line, but at the moment we are just working on a regular length lead. Once they are always successful with that I will increase the radius they can reach, and so on. The rule is that they must come on the first call, if they do not stop what they are doing I remove them from that spot and call again. If they do come that time we will gradually move closer to the original spot until we can do a recall from that spot successfully. The same no-pulling rule applies here also. If they pull on the lead, I simply stop moving. When they choose to come back to me they are rewarded and we move forward again. What I am trying to get across to them is: By checking in with me you may then have an opporunity to check out that interesting smell. By ignoring me you do NOT have that opportunity. So it is always a choice. Yes, they can continue to pull and try to get to it (hopefully unsuccessfully provided the handler maintains good lead handling skills
That should get us mostly up to date for now. Hopefully with the silly season nearing an end I will now be back to keeping more regular records of our work. With just four months to go until Nationals (shivers) we have a LOT of ground to cover.
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