A big part of the big trip was to get in a lot of training time. It was very nice to get to spend so much time with Griffin and in many ways it was a lot easier to do training when I wasn’t teaching training classes for hours each day. A week after we got home, Fanny has come here to Ohio for a seminar – today we’re on day 9 of 10. I don’t want to think about how sad I’ll be in a few days – but I am very happy with my training plans moving forward.
Scent articles: Griffin is not near Utility yet – and it’s a good thing. This has been an ongoing challenge. We started a new variation of training. I immediately feed at the article when he finds it – but before he picks it up. And we hide it in the grass and brush so he can’t easily see it. As he gets better we add in more unscented articles. Sessions are mostly moving towards better, any errors still make me nervous, but we re-set and try again.
This week we added in a sticky nose touch to a plastic lid and moved it closer and closer to the pile. Then we transferred the nose touch to a small piece of leather and doing that piece of leather hidden in brush. A second piece is that we set up a big pile of articles and scatter or hide food throughout. We’re working on getting slow and systematic searching and eating of food – not just grabbing everything.
Stand to down: Another Utility piece that is challenging. I want a perfect move from standing to being in a down, with no foot motion. Griffin has a very hard time keeping his feet still! Many of our early sessions were to work on getting a steadier stand and then a slight lean back. Slow and boring training but important. We’re seeing measurable progress – especially as we continued the work this week. It seems like we’re on a good track now.
Agility: We didn’t do too much agility – Griffin’s supposed to be on restricted activity. Once he’s allowed to be doing more things again, I’ll be teaching him new types of turn cues and work on back-side-of-jump cue/s. I was very happy with how he worked off leash in an outdoor location around other dogs. He stayed on task and was trying very hard. His speed and enthusiasm was similar to what I see in trials and probably better than what I’ve seen in group class – running on real grass probably contributed to that.
Ring entries: With the various people coming and going and taking the dogs to different places we got to practice “walk into a new area,” “new people for stand for exam,” “taking off the least to give to a person,” and other trial details. Working in so many new locations was very good for Griffin and once the seminar week is over I will be making an effort to maintain our progress.
Focus and off -leash: We ended up with many opportunities to work on good off leash behaviors. This was very good for us and Griffin did great. Most of our training at home has been inside or in outdoor places were my dog is supposed to be kept on leash. I shouldn’t be surprised he did so well, but I am!