It was a long weekend. Went to my parents' yesterday afternoon. Then drove them to Seattle (they don't drive in Seattle and seldom at night) to meet with my brother, Sam, and his family. We did some light sightseeing (my Dad can't do much) and then headed out to dinner. My other brother, Mark, and his girlfriend Dana joined us for dinner. It was fun and there was a whole lot of laughing going on. By the time we got back to Auburn it was almost midnight. Spent the night and then joined Mom for church this morning. I was going to help her get her tree up, but basically the afternoon got dawdled away. I made them a big pot of chili for supper before leaving. Just got home an hour ago.
Naturally the dogs didn't get to do much and spent far too much time crated. When I got home here, Gimme was fit to be tied and wanted ATTENTION. So I decided to do a training session with her. I had thought before I might do scent discrimination tonight, but since I wasn't sure how focused she would be, having been cooped up so much over the weekend, I decided to hold that until tomorrow.
We worked on the forehand "pivot". I've worked on it several times recently really reinforcing the front feet on and tonight she finally seemed to understand I really didn't mean for her to put the back feet on at all. She's gotten so reliable about keeping the front feet on during the pivot execution, so I started putting the cue on it.
Then we did some heeling work. She was already getting the 90 right pivot, but the last time I tried to pivot left, she wasn't getting it, so I moved on to other things. She really seemed to get it tonight that if I pivot in either direction, she can swing her butt and stay in heel. Now all the sudden, its like she invented it. One of the things that has been hardest for her is staying in heel for the first couple of steps. So tonight I did a couple of one-step-halt and after the first one she got it. She claims she invented heeling, but I seem to recall hearing someone talking about it before Gimme was even born.
After that we did some front work. I could leave her on a stay and walk away, stopping either with my back to her or side to her, cue "front" and she did a very credible job of getting into front position. Once I tweaked my own treat delivery it got even better.
I was mighty happy with all that and yet it was clear that Gimme wanted to do more, so I decided to do some of our nosework homework. I have to confess I haven't done any nosework outside of class until tonight. But I know we need to do a bunch of it to get going on the pairing of the level one odor with food. I shut Gimme in the office, got our tin and a treat, put them in a shoebox and hid it in the walk-in closet off my bedroom. Here's where it gets cool...
When I let Gimme out of the office I gave her our nosework cue "where-zit". She had come out bouncy and ready to play and when she heard that she paused to look at me as if to say, "you mean it?" Then her nose instantly and OBVIOUSLY went to work and it took her no time to find the hide in the bedroom. I really didn't think she'd learned that cue and was assuming she knew what to do in class based on the location. So to see such an demonstrable understanding was just waaaaay cool.
We did three more hides, one in the bedroom, the bathroom and the living room. It was really neat to see her look for them and find them. Her nosework scenting behavior is getting clearer for me to see, which is also waaaaay cool.
This nosework is lotsa fun and I highly recommend it. Gimme seconds that recommendation.
No comments:
Post a Comment