More homework!
This is the work that I videoed and had the energy to edit and upload today. Honestly, it takes as much time to video, import, edit, upload, and write as it does to plan and do training!
Non-videoed/edited/uploaded work done today included: more play with both dogs than is seen here (including an amazing personal play spurt with Sei that was not on tape), shaping putting one’s head through a collar with Sei, and a quick first walk together with both dogs. Sei’s leash skills are not being heavily worked on at the moment. He has a tendency to balk at the leash, but I haven’t yet found a food that he will take while outside. When he walked with Perrin, I had minimal balking and lots of leaning into his harness and moving forward. I will take that! I can work on yielding to collar pressure separately for loose leash walking as long as I have a functional way to take him out places.
As for videoed work, I have two toy sessions with each dog. Both dog’s disengaged this morning; Perrin never engaged at all with me, and Sei quit playing. I find it coincidental that both dogs did that in the morning but not in the afternoon. I must have been off this morning, or gone too long, or it was too hot for them out or any number of other things. Maybe a fluke, maybe something else, just got to keep an eye on it. Both dogs did stellar in the afternoon. Perrin even wanted the tug badly enough to sit for it! Whoohoo!
Sei also did another round of the push game for the empowerment course. I upped the difficulty only a tiny bit from yesterday by adding tennis balls to the pan and canning rings, and by trying the metal bowl again, but this time with nothing in it but kibble.
We tried substrates for the first time today. I have no idea if I did this right. My vague understanding of the exercise is that I should be marking and rewarding for interaction with the substrates/random things I put in the middle of the room, rather than focus on me. If the goal was to get him to interact with the substrates, I do think we made it that far. At first Sei only wanted to follow me around the pile, but then started interacting with the things more and more as we went. Please excuse the broken lid on the big container, Perrin wanted to demonstrate how awesome it is to get on top of things and broke it, haha.
Adventures in Dog Training 