RFE practice (70)

She should be in a false pregnancy, but I'm not seeing it yet. There was a new, very loud barker in day care and Gimme did a good job ignoring him.

 

Backward weaves video - I haven't worked on this in a long time. It was developing a negative association, so I thought we should take a break from it. First, I notice I was using my "close" and "near" backward, poor Gimme. I don't know why I persist in trying to steer her rear end using her nose, since it's never worked yet. I think when she does "beep", I need to be MUCH faster with the reward. I switch to having her "beep" straight through with me behind her (not weave style), to let her do some easy, fast reps. There is another RFE move where we'll use this, so it's all good training. We actually got a couple repetitions which were similar to the end behavior - a first. I need to remember to have some chicken nuggets available to reward those best efforts. This time I just used multiple treats, but I think the nuggets are more meaningful. Part of this I was spending time getting her to get comfortable doing "near" and "close" while I had one foot stepped back.

 

"Take-a" bow video - We did a couple of bows on each side, focusing on alignment and keeping her heiney up.

 

"Scoot" video - Because she's still uncertain about the components of backward weaves, I wanted to end on a fun behavior. She loves "scoot", so we did a few, focusing on distance.

 

I wanted to do a bit of a backchain, to see if I could use it to strengthen Gimme's heeling between behaviors. So I set up four behaviors in a mini-course. I started by practicing each individually, then I put them together. I decided to make "Take-a" the third behavior, so Gimme wouldn't assume it was the end of a sequence.

 

"Around" video - Station 1 was the "around". She's really familiar with this behavior, so I just did a couple.

 

About U-180 video - I don't know why she tried to do something different a couple of times. This behavior is based on the "around" cue, which she knows so well.

 

Handler front cross video - The key thing is to always take one step forward before I turn and to keep my shoulders squared, otherwise Gimme thinks it's a pivot. If I remember my part, then she does her part.

 

Backchain a sequence video - Once I had practiced each of the individual behaviors, we started at station 3, walked to station 4 and performed the last behavior, 3 times. Even though we'd done it a few times, Gimme needed a refresher. When we added in the next behavior, the "take-a", Gimme just couldn't keep her alignment. I've noticed before the more times we do it, the more she swings her butt out. For a course video, I probably won't even do the "take-a" unless I think the video was good enough. I didn't want to deal with it right then, so I set up a barrier to help her stay straight. As we started to add the next behavior, I noticed the "take-a" started deteriorating. When the daycare dogs went into barking overload, then I started treating the bow. One of the things about backchains is the need to sometimes pay the middle behaviors or you lose them. We end up doing the same thing with her heeling. The process took a long time, but Gimme stayed engaged and willing to work. Of course, I was mindful of the time and effort and there were several play breaks. Nothing fancy here, but I see it will work for our upcoming intermediate entry.

 

Backing in heel video - In this session I discovered a physical cue which seems to work. I tested it once without a foot target to back to and it was pretty good. The cue is to lean my shoulders back a little bit. It's not obvious, but I can feel it and Gimme sure sees it. If it works, then I'll be able to attach a cue. I'm wondering if I should give it a different cue, besides "back", which always has her moving away from me.

 

We did a bit of doodling finding positions, but Gimme was really all used up. Given how much work she'd done already, I'm not surprised.

 

We have an intermediate entry coming up. I don't think we are really ready, but if we wait until then, I might never get entered. Besides, I've never felt like we were ready and we did okay so far.