Training at Bass Pro

Michelle very kindly met me at Bass Pro again today. I just have to say that I really appreciate her taking her free time to help me out. I don't know what I'd do without her!!

We didn't get a lot of time to train because for some reason, our abandoned corner of the store seemed like a hot spot for people with kids. And then the kids would want to pet the doggy... and then want to pluck toys off the shelf for him to chase... It's funny because when people come around, Red almost completely ignores them and just sits by me, staring at my face. Yes, I continually feed him treats to encourage this behavior, but I like how he defaults to this everytime someone comes around.

Once we did actually get time to train though, Michelle noticed my footwork was wrong for the about turn. I was planting a foot, then turning too fast, which immediately put Red in a lagging position. So I'm putting both feet together and sort of pivoting more, so Red stays in position. Only thing is that I don't want him to think we are halting and go into a sit, so I'm verbally cueing him to keep coming with me.

The other thing we still don't have down yet is the 180 left pivot. The 90 is fine, and both the 90 and 180 right pivots are fine. So we put Red on leash, put the leash around the back of my body instead of in front, and kept him pulled inward as we pivoted. At one point, Michelle said "heel" and he swung his rear right around in a perfect pivot. Then I tried and got a good pivot out of him too, so that was good. I'm going to keep working on this.

The dumbbell... dun dun dunnnn! He will take it and sit with it ok. He will "leave it" then go get it on command, and then prance around with it. At one point, I got him to sort of heel while holding it, and I halted which cued him to sit, and then I grabbed it before he dropped it. And that was great! But after that it all went south... I tried it again, and he dropped it. Then he realized we were working and not playing, he shut down and wouldn't even take it anymore... gah! So we put it away for awhile, then brought it back out later. Michelle sat on the ground with him and made it into a game of keep away. He seemed more accepting of participating when things went back into game-mode instead of working-mode. So I'm just going to keep playing games with it, and practicing him holding while sitting.

I did a long sit/stay and he was great. No problems at all. He's really come a long way with this.

So all in all, everything's coming along well except the db stuff... but we still have a LONG way to go before we really need to get serious about that. Hopefully if we just keep practicing with it, we can take baby steps in the right direction =)