1) Foundations are important. Don’t neglect it. 2) Frontload your effort…put a TON of time planning your training, and then you will have to do less actual training to progress. 3) Use video. And use it well. 4) Clicker training is at a sticking point. We need to progress past Read more…
Blaze No formal training. Luna Recalls: On our long walk, she was on her 50′ line…I called and fed several times. Not as much as I would have liked, because it didn’t look like she was ready for that. Griffin Field Retrieve: We did 5-10 formal field retrieves…sit…wait…item tossed… release…dog Read more…
Blaze: Rally: A fake run through, no signs set up, just seeing where we were. We just need to test this elsewhere and do more training with distractions. Luna Tricks: Working on her paws around an object behavior. She’s so gentle! This will be a challenge. I need to go Read more…
Blaze Retrieve: We did play fetch, alternating items (plastic ball, jolly ball, kong wubba toy). Preferred of those is definitely the wubba. At one point he caught the ball part and one of the flaps in his mouth…and his paw was stuck in the loop…he wouldn’t let me come near Read more…
Blaze Heeling: Reinforcing head up. Careful to feed in position. He’s nowhere as precise as Griffin but he has a feeling of reliability and long history of practice. Luna No fun and games. Griffin Shaping: We were at training group early and as I use these spikey round things for Read more…
Blaze A heeling session: Due to the amount of tracking that we have been doing, he thinks outside = tracking. Heeling is difficult. We attempted a high rate of reinforcement for head up and working. Luna Heeling: She wasn’t taking the food I had, we used play when she moved Read more…
Let’s see what happens over a week of training. Every week is a bit different, but it’s good to check in and see how time is being used and if training sessions are actually productive. Blaze: – 1 track in the yard. He did well, I don’t know if I’m Read more…
We’re getting into a nice pattern of working at home, in town, at training group, and after classes. It’ll be easier once I have my crates set up in the car better and I can take multiple dogs, but for now we’re doing okay rotating dogs. Thursday night I worked Read more…
Griffin is being taught to indicate a specific odor. And we’re having a REALLY hard time teaching this. It’s like a dog that only knows verbal cues…. visual cues are hard because they think nothing else will provide any sort of signal. Griffin doesn’t really understand that scent can be Read more…
On Saturday at a 4-H conference I’ll be doing part of the dog program talk…. specifically the agility games (fullhouse and wildcard) and rally part. The agility part I think is well done, we talk about the requirements and then look at course maps that are color-coded to help us Read more…