I am still working on basics...
Heeling warm-up video - I started with c/t for offered attention, then went to heelwork. When she is out of position, I'm stopping or moving sideways away from her, instead of backing up - hoping it feels less aversive. It was hard for her to work through the distraction of having a strange dog with someone standing right outside our gate, but she persevered and did pretty good. Then they moved to the adjacent training space and were training/playing, which was even harder. Kathy always says I should stop while I'm rewarding her, but in this case I wanted to keep moving, to keep her attention on me. I certainly would have had her attention while I was rewarding her when stopped, but it would have lapsed as we tried to restart. She had a brief confusion in "side" and "setup" - she kept trying to give me an "izzy", but we got through it.
From heeling we went on to work on backward weaves using something I'd done at home. While it worked well at home, it wasn't working here. Since then it doesn't work at home either. I've decided to go back to my original idea and will progress much slower. I'll be luring her through my legs and then getting her to back "beep" to where she was. I will start with her in heel on either side and then step forward with the far leg. I'll need to treat her in place several times before cuing "beep", because before she started to automatically back up again and I don't want to ruin other behaviors. Knowing how she is about assumptions, I think I just need to take it much, Much, MUCH slower and be sure I reward all the pieces. Time will tell.
I think in RFE you can fail one exercise as long as you attempt it - maybe even attempt it more than once. I would know we can't do it, but can pretend we are trying to do it. It'd be a poor score, but oh well...
Circles video - I'm continuing to work on getting tighter circles. "Behind" is tighter than "around". I want to work on it at home with barriers, so I can refresh the physical habit. I can do it with the guides and also using natural barriers (furniture).
"Cane" & "orbit" video - I recently realized the source of Gimme's confusing between "cane"/"orbit" and "out" had to do with similar physical cues. So this is my first session trying to introduce a different physical cue. Of course have since learned this cue would be deemed luring and cost us points. I'm glad I've only done the one session, so I can still refine it. You can see Gimme obviously thinks one good turn deserves another. You can also see she obviously doesn't listen to me much, eh.
Mixing "out", "cane" & "orbit" video - Here I tried mixing them up a bit. It was really far too soon to be testing her understanding, but she did surprisingly well. I kept it very short.
Heeling and behavior sequences video - I am still doing short sequences with multiple behaviors (2) and ending with a reward on heeling. Soon we'll add a third behavior. Remember this is all about helping her value heeling; even with the disruption to flow caused by the other behaviors.
Center front pivot video - Gimme does these pretty good, but she has a tendency to turn the CCW pivot into an "otto". J'Anna had a good idea about doing a quarter turn in one direction, then reversing direction, so I ended with that.
Heeling pecks video - We got in one good sequence, then Gimme was distracted by a little girl she saw just as they squeaked a toy in daycare. That's a huge distraction for her and it took her a moment to give it up, but she did. She was still a bit distracted when we started up again, but got better as we worked.
Backward heeling video - She did really well in "heel". In "side" it's always harder because of her tendency to swing her heiney CCW, into an "otto". I love her "otto", but the dang thing does tend to creep into everything.
"Izzy" and "otto" video - "Otto" is still stronger than "izzy", probably always will be. I see I need to make it a point to reward in a precise ending position, especially for "izzy" since her heiney tends to swing wide at the end.
I was really pleased with Gimme's efforts, especially given how much barking, squealing and other noises we had to listen to. She tries so hard.
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