Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Mini-Sessions

Today has been a lot of mini-sessions. I took Toby out to the track for a good run on his 50ft, but not only that... I took our little jump with us. I set it up in the middle of the field and after getting his ya-yas out we did a few call-throughs for the jump. I don't really have much of an idea when it comes to agility training as of yet... so I'm making it up as I go along and doing whatever makes sense. I figured a good way to start would be to just get him running through the jump standards. We'd already done a shaping session of it at home, and a few things in and out of the house with it. So I set him in a wait on one side of the jump and called him over from the other side. That worked well enough. Next step I figured would be to run alongside him as he went through it. We do that fine at home (in and outside), but he thought it was much funner to tackle me instead. Reminds me how little playing we actually do at the track...

Toby doesn't play with me if we're not home... so I don't even bother to bring toys most of the time. However, he's willing to play agility with me there, so I can't help but wonder if we're there often enough that he now considers it a second backyard of sorts? I think I'll experiment on bringing some toys with us. As well as use the Premack Principle to up the value of playing with me even more so.

Once home we relaxed for awhile before getting down to some more training. I fed both dogs their breakfasts while on their mats. We haven't done this since the first time (bad me!) but Toby did well. All his Relaxation Protocol and Mat work really pay off. Reba decided it was much easier to just stay on her mat than get up each time after I led her back to hers a few times. I can do a lot more when I have the living room to work in... I can jog, do figure eights around the dogs, play with the front door, leave the room, all kinds of things. So not only is it helpful to have those added distractions for Toby's mat work, but I really want to build having a spot to send them for when I want to work with one dog individually. I'm hoping to do this again Thursday morning again.

Then after another break Toby and I went to my room for some shaping sessions. We refreshed on his bow... I want to get him to hold it for 10 seconds before I put a cue on it. Why? Because all though 75% of the time he'll hold it for a count of 5, sometimes he starts to bow and then folds back into his down. It was an awesome way to capture the behavior, but I've had a hard time getting him to discriminate it from his down (which is also his default behavior... xD).

Then we did some hind leg work. I discovered that he's itchy today on a certain spot on his belly, so rubbing that while he was standing resulted in lifting his back legs like he was going to itch. I c/t that for a little while before stopping. I also cued him to down, clicked him for rolling onto one hip and tried clicking for any twitches his back feet gave. Got a few before he started getting silly with his face. So we switched gears and I started to click his play face. He pulls his lips/whiskers back... like a dog baring his teeth, except you never see the teeth. It's his 'grin'. I've always wanted it on cue, so why not?

After that we called it good for awhile. I did do some work with getting him to look away from me and at something else for some c/t. It's the start of the Look At That Game! in Control Unleashed. I'm not sure he's getting it, but it's the first time I've taught it too... so we'll see where we get with it.

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