Yesterday I spent a good portion of the day coming up with 8 week outlines to work with to use Perrin and Sei as case study dogs for my canine fitness trainer course.
Sei’s:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O1eyhDNjAw9UcFgOdwpx8HBGduO1bpXyJcp4Ci0mIjA/edit?usp=sharing
Its not quite done yet. I need to come up with the verbiage to fill in the specific goals section for a ‘general conditioning’ intention.
Perrin’s:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YYC6RrRBS9awi3DlyjKA-JuzO4FK_JloFUpolE1N440/edit?usp=sharing
Today we did our prescribed exercises for the day and did the necessary recording, as well as take baseline photos.
Sei played in the laneway today! Sei’s play is awesome in the back yard (the floors in the house are really too slippery to be safe for much play), but I have known for a while that I really need to get out of that space and start building those skills in new environments.
From past experience in new environments, and having watched how Sei’s toy/play drive developed in a familiar environment as he aged, I knew that when entering a new environment the following would likely happen:
- I would have personal play/chase me play first. This seems to be the last type of play Sei loses the ability to do in new and or distracting environments.
- I would have chasing a toy. The next easiest type of play for Sei. He will chase a floppy tug toy, and lightly grab it, but with no strong hold or tug. A ball or a frisbee rolled on the ground would be chased and pounced on, but not picked up or carried around.
- In really comfortable environments, Sei will intensely go after a tug/ball/frisbee following me and his toy around with strong focus, often jumping up, barking at me.
Each of those categories have ranges as well, from having to be convinced that the type of play in question would be a fun thing to do, to laser focused on that play and playing intensely.
For on-leash trips out, I had only taken a tug before, mainly for user-friendliness reasons. Right now, tug ranks above balls, but below frisbees. When out in the suburbs, he will chase them and bite at them, but he hasn’t done any good tugging yet (class settings is a different story). Today I took a disc out to the laneway to see how that went.
At first, Sei was more interested in sniffing than me, but I got him chasing me around fairly quickly. Then I got him chasing the disc in my hand, then doing tiny catches so he had to move to catch it. And he really got into it! He did some spins and sits for catches, and by the time I had to run to get my bus, he was super in the game! We were only out there for 3 minutes! Whoohoo!
Adventures in Dog Training 