#100DaysofTEAM
Day 39
Sei and I worked hard on engagement homework this morning while Perrin and I tried linking some of the retrieve bits together out in the driveway. I love how excited he gets about his retrieve 
Sei
Training Log – October 4, 2018
#100DaysofTEAM
Day 38
A very brief, early morning session of position changes with Perrin and perch shaping with Sei. Perrin and I have been alternating the position changes in heel on and off the platform. He doesn’t love doing downs on the platform, but he is ultra crooked without it. It looks like we are getting somewhere with it!
Training Log- October 3, 2018
#100DaysofTEAM
Day 37
This morning Sei and I did our engagement homework for that class, and did some bits for the pivot. Perrin and I tried some fronts and find heels with a pivot platform rather than the full one.
Doing the find fronts and find heels on the pivot platform was a poor exercise choice because of Perrin’s cone. It really messed up his muscle memory for how close to be and his path into heel. He was a good sport though, and did well considering that impediment.
With Sei I tried an exercise that I hoped would help develop some stillness during stationary moments on the pivot perch. I used the reverse luring/hand zen thing (still not really sure where this technique belongs, but it has come in handy for me in the past) to get some stillness on the perch. He is obviously not magnetized to the perch well enough yet either, but I find when I just work on that I get all sorts of dancing/prancing/extraneous movement and I am not fast enough to click the bit of stillness when he gets on. So I am hoping by trying to alternate between these two exercises, it might help that.
Training Log – October 2, 2018
#100DaysofTEAM
Day 36
This morning it was pouring rain out, so we just did some stays inside.
Training Log – September 30, 2018
#100DaysofTEAM
Day 34
More pivots! Today I tried to slow the pivots down for each dog. Perrin had no problems. Sei had no idea what was going on. It really showed me what parts Sei really does understand, and which parts he doesn’t.
- He gets the part about moving his back feet.
- He had a hard time standing still on the perch, there was a lot of dancing.
- Need to do some duration building on the perch in heel (he has no problem with still duration in heel off the perch). Yes Virginia, standing still is a payable behaviour!
- He also anticipates the pivot before I move, which explains the large amount of over rotation we have been getting.
- See above, I think that understanding will solve this one
- No ‘magnetization’ to the perch, needs to be encouraged to get on it
- Go back and shape just getting on it. Would actually be the first step to building duration.
We also worked on the cone wrap. The last few times I tried, we had cone thievery, so that was what I expected to work on. Sei didn’t have that problem though. He did seem to have some sort of understanding issue with it. Part of it was that I had cookies in my ‘pointing’ hand, but I never did nail down the entirety of what it was.
Perrin did his cone wraps perfectly, so I didn’t want to keep drilling it. I decided to try a vertical target, but set the target up before I set him up. This to test the theory that me going and setting up the target is his actual cue for this behaviour. I think I confirmed that. He wrapped the cone the first rep, and when I set it up for the second, he did a perfect vertical target. (I didn’t set him up quite right for this one because of space constraints, I do know this isn’t a ‘TEAM worthy’ set up.)
Training Log – September 29, 2018
#100DaysofTEAM
Day 33
I had to wait until the evening to edit our morning video, but I got it done! Today we worked on heeling bits.
Perrin and I just worked on some one step doodles in the backyard.
Sei and I continued to explore pivots. We need to slow them down a lot! Sei really doesn’t understand them yet, and I haven’t split them down well enough. Sei tends to throw himself around a lot, which our current platform is not very forgiving of. So I tried a pot. It was better because it didn’t fly around when Sei started dancing, and it is a bit higher, which makes it easier for Sei to stay on the target. I think we will work in it for a while until Sei’s understanding gets a bit better. Tomorrow I will work on marking just first step, the movement from the sit into the stand/step when I start moving.
Training Log – September 28, 2018
#100DaysofTEAM
Day 32
Today was a lot of bad training, and experimenting without a pre-formed plan. I know I had fun though, and I think my dogs did too. This week has gone pear shaped at every turn, and I was out of mental energy to work on precision behaviours, or things that I really care a lot about. So we just played around with some random bits and pieces.
Perrin is in such good spirits, despite his cone and ear. I’m so happy that he is feeling as good as possible under the circumstances. If he wants to play, then we will!
Sei and I dabbled with mimicry to add a send to platform over a jump, and then some position changes with me in unusual positions.
Training Log – September 27, 2018
#100DaysofTEAM
Day 31
Another day copied from the facebook post! Although Sei does get a long version of his video. Too busy to do better today:
I expected this morning to just be Sei and I, as Perrin wasn’t able to come back from the vet until fairly late last night and is having a hard adjustment to the cone. But he refused to be left out! Figuring out what he could do with that massive cone on was a bit of a challenge, so we settled on some find-heels (with an alternative to cookie tosses because he couldn’t get them on the ground) with sit and stand position changes (because he didn’t like down; the cone would touch the platform and that was a no-go). I think he was just happy to play and get his mind of the cone and his ear.
I really wanted to continue the puzzle of adding fronts to the jump without the flying Sei. I tried using Perrin’s platform (easier to see), set it as far away from the jump as I could, and used food instead of a toy. Success!
Training Log – September 26, 2018
#100DaysofTEAM
Day 30
Did some things with Sei today. Not feeling up to doing all of the video editing required. Too anxious about Perrin at the vet for surgery (its routine!). Here is a quick video and the blurb from our facebook post on the TEAM page. Hopefully tomorrow I can do better record keeping.
Just Sei and I today, poor Perrin is in at the vet to have an ear hematoma surgically drained (I am anxiously awaiting his return!). So Sei and I did a variety of sloppy things, experimenting with adding toys and platforms to jumps and cones. Today’s takeaway? We are not quite yet ready for that yet!
But we did a little sequencing of TEAM 1 in the house, while experimenting with new platform orientations, and that went okay. There is a lot of forward movement between the sit-down-sit sequence, so we will eventually have to address that.
Training Log – September 25, 2018
#100DaysofTEAM
Day 29
Some training days are good. Others look like this. I was just out of bandwidth to address the cone snatching, so moved on to my other dog . Oh dear.
I went back inside and was able to pull it together with some better thought. The original plan was to see if I could do the circle a cone with a jump in between. I have never done that exercise with either dog before, and have no skills at chaining yet. But Sei has done mimicry so I tried that. And he nailed it! I tried after to see if he could do it on the circle cue (ie, was he mimicking me or did he understand after all?). He didn’t understand on cue, so he was truly mimicking me. I still think mimicry is the coolest thing Sei and I have ever done together.
Adventures in Dog Training 