Griffin has been on restricted activity all month. We managed to still do a lot of training – it just was the things I should probably do rather than the things that are more fun to work on. It’s been hard to not do the sequencing and trial prep we were doing before this break – I was feeling confident and ready to enter trials.
Stays: If we are training away from home I often will tether Griffin to a post or a tree so that if he breaks we don’t have a safety risk, rewards he shouldn’t have, or risk re-injuring his leg.
- Distance – Gradually increasing the number of steps I move away from Griffin. We’re working as far as we have space for. At some of the fields I can get 100 or more steps away.
- Locations – Working in new and different places. I really like how he can be kind of wild and excited and distracted but then go right into his calm, steady stay behaviors.
- Out of Sight: When we have appropriate locations we’re starting to add out of sight stays. I prefer to do this when I have a helper so I can re-set if he were to break, but we usually train on our own and he seems to only make a mistake on about 1/15 repetitions. I use video to help me see what’s happening while I’m away – I want him to have the same happy, calm look whether I’m present or not. At one point he started to get more alert and we went back to easier stages.
- Testing: Last May and the previous November we were told to do a test to see how long he could actually hold position. I finally was brave enough to test a Sit, we’re at about 2:45 before he breaks and we had a little noise at 2:30. This is way further than I thought we were – so now we know where to be pushing.
- Down: We have informal criteria of head down. It’s possible that this is more fun to do than actually useful, but he looks so adorable with his head on the floor and I like that he presses his head down more when he wants to be released. In some sessions his front paws end up sprawled way out to the side because he is pressing himself to the floor so hard.
Scent articles: We still have variation in performance. If I use too exciting of a reward we see the behavior deteriorate. Last week I started adding in fresh scented articles mid-session, I want to be sure he’s finding my scent, not just the one that smells like his slobber. Here’s a video at a not very useful angle: