Busy Girl

I've come to the realization that I'm just going to have to keep a separate calendar for Gimme's schedule.  I keep running into conflicts between what I have planned and what I want to do.  I feel like a soccer mom who is desperately trying to keep up.  All Gimme wants to know is whether her new purple leash is in the car and do I have enough cheese.

We've been keeping busy lately with a little bit of plinking here and there on different training things.  A lot of focus is going into nosework... which is how I discovered the calendar double booking.  The trial I planned to go to in April is on the same weekend as the Sdao/Pouliot seminar we are signed up for.  So now am looking at a couple others - March or June, both in Oregon.

We are playing with the Project behaviors again - which we haven't done since October.  I have been working off and on with the target stick "wait for the cue" and its coming along.   I still haven't fixed the "apple" box, so that will have to wait. 

Grape - dead bug (on back, feet in the air)

I wanted to do this since I now have interlocking floor matting to cushion Gimme from the hard floor (and provide better traction for other things). Since we haven’t trained this for three months and since it wasn’t on cue when we left off, it took awhile to get Gimme back to offering it. Even though she has been doing the Grape in my lap when she wants attention (which started 4 days after we let Michael go). She offered me a lot of "pretty" instead (we’ve been free shaping this), got frustrated and barked some. I kept clicking a "down" and when she was solid on that, I started clicking for movement while she was down. Finally in frustration she did a movement that was almost a grape and she got two treats. Next thing I knew she was throwing a LOT of  grape behaviors at me. I started putting it on cue and will continue in the next session. She sure is cute.

Melon - push cube with nose

Again a project behavior we haven’t done in three months. Gimme knew what to do the moment she saw her cube. There was a short bit of skiing on the cube and batting it, but she settled down to using her nose very quickly.  I started putting it on cue and following our earlier Grape session, she seemed to understand what I meant. She was even pushing it with her paw or using her mouth to get it out of corners and away from the walls so she could then push it with her nose AFTER I’d cued "melon". Smart cookie.

My friend loves to alter pictures and such and add sayings and stuff... so I usually get things from her that have pictures of Gimme that she's taken before.  Just got this one...