Today was a play skills kind of day! And Sei even caught his first piece of thrown food today. Woohoo!
Sei
Today we started working on the homework material for Toys- Building Cooperation and Play homework. I took a baseline of his one-ball retrieve:
And worked on the Two Ball Game for the first time actually following the damn instructions (oops):
I thought about half way through that he looked like he had to pee. When he checks out of playing, I have noticed that most of the time he is checking out to relieve himself. So I tried waiting a minute, then he didn’t pee so I continued. The first thing he did when we finished and I walked over to stop the camera? Peed where he stood. Yup, should have listened to my instincts.
Other than that, I am very happy with how he did with this! It is light years ahead of where we left it about a month ago. He is also really starting to know what my marker word ‘chase’ means; a few times after I say it, he runs out ahead of the ball, expecting it to be thrown.
Perrin
I picked up some lotus balls when I was in the states to bring Sei home, and I still hadn’t tried them with Perrin! They are a soft ball that has three ‘petals’ that velcro together, and a pocket inside that holds a piece of food. Some dogs open them on their own, and other dogs bring the ball back to the handler to be opened. I was curious to see which one Perrin would be!
So we went out to the yard with the lotus ball and a baggie of meatloaf pieces and tried it out. Turns out that Perrin is a retriever! He LOVED it, and it took him about 2 throws to be immediately turning back to bring me the ball, rather than rolling it around with his nose trying to see if anything would fall out of it. We went until I ran out of meatloaf, and Perrin was still happy to keep going. This is going to be a great tool!
Unfortunately I don’t have video of this, because my camera died.
Adventures in Dog Training 