I'll start by catching up on our targeting and shaping class. The class last week, Gimme made solid progress on pushing a door shut. And she went straight to awesome on turning the rocker style light switch on and off. That's easier than the toggle style, but still a challenge. That's only the second time she's ever seen that, so I was very pleased with her progress.
This week we were doing stations. Her first station was the door and she did really well, pushing it a solid 9 inches to close it. Second station was to get in a box and lay down. Naturally she was in it instantly and offered me lots of things before laying down. She lays down sphinx style for most things, so chose the option of flattening both ends to make room for herself. At the door she was in a cubicle and for the box although she could see another dog it was further away.
For the third station, going around a cone, she had dogs on either side of her about 8 feet away and the distraction of another dog's cubicle, so it took her longer to get it, especially with the periods of needing to look at the other dogs. Still she was well behaved. She did pretty good for the fourth station, a large plastic crate and a chair to get on. Since she already has the "apple" behavior - this went very well. She applied it to the crate, which is very like her red box, and to the chair when I pointed at it. We also did some sequencing between cues she knew and those two. Then Ursula said to teach her to put only her front feet on - that was more challenging and we didn't make a lot of headway. Gimme is so primed to jump on things, that it was hard getting the timing right to stop her with just two feet - so something new to work on.
Our last station was the light switch and the regular toggle kind at that. By then I'd used up most of Gimme's brain. I scooted my chair back in the cubicle so she didn't have to see the other dogs. She was at least able to focus on it and target the toggle, but wasn't really moving it. Its interesting how those classes seem to alternate between easy and hard for Gimme's issues... which is about perfect and each time she does better and better.
Nosework tonight was another field trip to Home Depot. The first search was with three hides across the street on the sunny side of the Costco building. It was very hot and made searching more challenging. Interestingly the dogs all had the most trouble with the hide right out in the open - two tins stuck on a manhole cover. Gimme did well.
Second search was along a shady side of the Home Depot building. Gimme scented the first hide from the start line and had it in less than two seconds. Finding the other two took her no time at all - she was very efficient.
Our third search was inside Home Depot in the lumber aisle. The first hide was on the lumber support about ten feet from the threshold. The second was at the other end of that half of the lumber aisle, but back against the wall so the dogs had to go back in between two stacks of lumber to get to it. Gimme did well at these.
This kid has no end of confidence. The heat did slow her down and make her more deliberate than usual. Our buddy Grafton did well too - showing good improvement from our last class at Home Depot, which I'm sure is in part because of our recent field trips. He even did well in the search in the lumber aisle, despite never having searched inside any building other than where we have class. Its great watching all the dogs improve.
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