Perrin:
Today we did a few more key retrieves. I didn’t hide them under anything today, but we moved into the kitchen. He also practiced some basic stays with Sei.
I also went through TEAM1 requirements to see what holes/skills I need to work on with Perrin to put the whole performance together.
- Vertical Target: I have taught a general nose touch, and he will foot target just about anything as a first shaping attempt, but nothing vertical. I think I will take the vertical target from the Manners Minder and work on putting a vertical target behaviour on cue
- Backing Up: Perrin knows how to back up but he does it in fits and starts rather than cleanly if he is backing away from me rather than in heel position. I will likely have to re-teach it to get it clean enough.
- Sends: Another thing that he knows, but just is not as clean as I would like it. I think that my cue is bad, because he offers it beautifully if I set a cone down to shape with it, but he is slow and unenthusiastic if I cue it. I will have to refine this one a bit.
Other than those, I think the behaviours are solid. That does not mean it will be easy to get it all together into the videos. It will require many takes. I will screw up. Perrin will screw up. Sei will cry too loud to hear me in the video. This will likely be a winter project. Maybe this weekend I will do a mock run through to establish a baseline.
Sei:
The boring basics were the name of the game today. Discriminating between ‘sit’ and ‘spin’. Sits. Sit stays. Adding a cue to a down when I could capture it. We did a little shaping for targeting a platform, which he did great with! He just seems to understand shaping now in a way that he did not before. He is much more intentional in his movements, and you can see the wheels turn in his head; he is starting to actually understand how the game works.
Adventures in Dog Training 