Time Flies

I can't believe it has been almost two weeks since I last posted a blog.  They have been a great two weeks as far as training and epiphanies go.  Iggy is starting to work much better with me and I have overcome some of my fears and put him in situations where he may fail, and he has, but I had a plan and it worked out :).  I have to keep remembering to learn from my failures and improve.

This morning we worked on the exercise from Christine's Friday night class.  Two jumps set up 15 feet apart.  Working on the dog understanding you standing still cues take the jump then turn towards me.  I imagine this is one of those exercises that the more you do the better the dog understands the cue.  I am more concerned that I am giving the right information than what the dog is doing.  I worked on standing still until the dog has committed to the jump and then either doing my front cross or wrap so before the dog is jumping he has the needed information.  It went very well we did about 7 tries on both sides with jumps from 16" to 26".  Tried two reps of also doing the second jump after the front cross and he nailed it.

This afternoon I wanted to work on shaping.  He came out of his crate not tugging hard, we had to work a few minutes on tugging to wake him up.  I was sitting on the ground in my back up position and took the toy out of his mouth.  Working on really paying attention to actions that are getting the rewards.  I need to film and watch because I am really starting to understand the detail you need to get good at shaping.  I need some sort of system in my mind.  Meanwhile while working Bill walked through and he got distracted and had to be called back then worked for a bit and then sat and scratched and I put him away.

Things I need for the next session.  I want the video camera set up.  I am working on getting 5 steps back, I will reward 1 step, 3 steps, 2, steps, 3 steps, 1 step, 4, steps, 2 steps, 3 steps and end.  I will break this sequence off with tugging after the 2nd 3 step.  I will reward in the center and ignore the fact that he is not straight.

Next session about 1 hour later.  I hemmed and hawed whether or not I would even bother but I went ahead.  Took him out to the bathroom and came in and played tug, I feel his tugging was the appropriate enthusiasm I pulled the tug out and fed as I said I would, after the tug break he lied down then got up and backed up I rewarded and then he started sniffing the floor and eventually lied down and starting licking the floor.  There is nothing on the floor so after about 15 seconds I took him by the collar and put him in his crate.  This was definitely falling back on old habits and not waiting for a cue from me.  He spent most of the day out of his crate yesterday and even though we didn't spend any formal training time he never rests out of his crate so we will go with he is tired and will stay in the crate until tomorrow evening when we have class and then we can reassess the brain.