We had scheduled an extra practice in case we needed it for videoing. It wasn't needed, so we just practiced. Gimme is well on her way into her false pregnancy. For over a week she's been woofing in the evening at noises I can't hear. Over the last few days, I'd noticed when I was sewing, she would go curl up under the desk in the office. I thought she was sulking, but then realized she's nesting. If I sit on the couch, no matter how hot it is, she has to be next to me under the covers. When we got to Pawsabilities yesterday, she whined and fussed the whole time. Even after her first session she whined and fussed. I gave her a toy for a baby, so she whined a little quieter. She still doesn't have a baby, but she is pretty needy.
Session 1 video - Since she was acting like the beginning of Mommy-brain, I started with just taking our time to train reorienting in the doorway. The garage door is open, but has wire panels secured across it (sorry about the glare). It initially is a distraction, but she gets over it pretty quickly. We did a few reps of up-touch. Because Gimme tends to be more emotional during her false pregnancies, I tried to stick with a lot of movement and doing things where I could keep a high rate of reinforcement. When she gets distracted, you'll see me reach my hand to touch her - I'm tickling her neck to help her refocus. I'm too slow to change direction when she gets distracted. At about 7:30 you'll see Gimme get really distracted toward the open door - then you hear the voice. A man came over to see what we were doing. I was too slow to get into training-through-distraction mindset, but when I did, Gimme did well. Men are a big distraction for her, since she has no standards and loves them all. We did just a few spins/turns and the like and she basically had to be reminded for all of them. I really shouldn't have tried to do the "side" and "heel" shifts. She got it finally, but I don't think we got any benefit there. Overall she did well, even though I had to scale it down a bit for her (but not nearly as much as in the past). Time will tell how this works out, but I'm feeling encouraged.
Session 2 video - The training reorienting at the door during the first session didn't completely transfer into the second session, though I did miss clicking a head turn. When I am clicking, I'm terribly late. Gimme really enjoyed my treat-spitting practice. She's such a giving person. I notice she seems to lean further away the more of these I do in a row, so in the future will limit it to just five at a time. My treat-spitting in motion is still a disaster. I thought her heeling this session was even better than the first session, more duration with attention. J'Anna had her pivot prop out so I was going to let Gimme "pivot" on it. Instead she wanted to do "Dumbo" (on with all 4 feet and spin in place), so I went with it. Its a little smaller than our usual "Dumbo" prop, so she had a challenge staying on during the spin. We did some finding position and she did well. At one point she sort of stalled in front of me, until I realized I was saying "setup" and not telling her which position. Dumb handler. At one point around 12:20 she just suddenly couldn't remember how to find "side". I think her brain was just used up. We got through it, did one more very similar rep and then quit. Honestly, it was a lot of work for her condition.
One of the things I really loved seeing was having the second session be better than the first. This has never happened before. It wasn't a big-Big difference, but noticeable. Most particularly I noticed she was able to do heeling with more duration and attention than the first session. Overall I was very pleased with how this went.
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