Gimme and I have walked a lot, trying to get ahead of plan since we'll be separated for a week while I'm in California. I want to be sure to make our annual 500 mile goal together. Meanwhile Gimme claims I don't do near enough with her. We also got in some other light training over the weekend.
Today was Public Dog class at Auto Zone. I was glad there were only four of us, because it was a small store. We all started by handing over our treat bags to Ursula. Its another exercise to work without food on our person -- the idea being to work a little bit and when we got something particularly nice... verbally mark it and then rush over to Urs for treats.
I tried this, but every time I tried to go to Urs for treats, there were one or two other dogs right there and it would've been too close for Gimme. I think having to walk the dog-gauntlet to get treats would have really taken the fun out of the cheese. We did get treats twice, but it was 15 minutes into class, just not a high enough rate of reinforcement. So when I could I told Ursula it wasn't working for us and why. She gave me our treat bag, told me to put it on a shelf and work away and then back to it.
I did that and it worked very well. I moved our treat bag to other locations (4 different places), so we weren't working in the same spot. I have to say Gimme got a real charge out of this exercise and even the worst of her efforts, still had a lot of good attention to it. Ursula noticed and said the same.
I've said before I think I'm boring. That's why I'm really looking forward to the Denise Fenzi online academy courses that we'll be starting in December. I'm sure that will help me be less boring and more fun. As I see how Gimme responds to these different challenges - I also realize I don't challenge her enough. I've always said she thrives on challenge and I clearly am not giving her enough.
When I got to class, Gimme was very unfocused, but this level of challenge just sucks her right in. She just can't resist it. We did a sit stay with Tor, just 7 feet away (I even dropped the leash and was about 8 feet away from her). Gimme was completely fine with it -- that's pretty close to the separation we'd have in competition. We even did a sit stay with me at the end of the leash when the black Lab was standing nearby and just as they moved away, Susan and Tucker walked by kinda close.
What excited me the MOST was the unintended exercises in Sudden Environment Change. Any dog with issues is likely to be really challenged by SEC and Gimme is no exception. Because the racks in the store were so tall and the aisles so narrow, there was really no way to know if someone was about to walk by as we'd come to the end of the aisle. Repeatedly we'd be within a foot or two from the end when a team would walk by suddenly and close. Gimme was fine every time. She'd watch the dogs, but showed no concern. Of course, she knows these dogs from class, but its still huge progress.
In thinking about this after class I realized that in our other walks, she has stopped scanning the horizon looking for other dogs. At some point, she dropped her constant on-alert behavior and I didn't even notice it. This is really exciting....
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