Gimme is going into her false pregnancy, naturally just in time for our RFE Intermediate entry. If we qualify, it'll be our third leg and a title, so cross your fingers for us. When she's in a false pregnancy, she has a tendency to get food frantic, where she stops listening and just flings behaviors at me trying to get a treat.
I tried using her special bowl, but she became obsessed about it. It was so bad when I sent her to do her brick-pivot, which was somewhat in the direction of the special bowl, she ran to the bowl instead. I think the excitement of running to it was just too much, as was running in the direction of it. If you listen for it, you will hear some whining when she wants to go to the bowl and I won't say the word. My goal was to reward calm behaviors, so I abandoned the special bowl, which this time seemed to be working against what we needed.
I practiced all of our free choice behaviors and some of the course behaviors. Then I did short sequences of 2 or 3 behaviors. I also made it a point to work through the distraction of corners. I don't know why they fascinate her so. The same stuff has always been there and this was our 80th practice session, so it should be blasé by now. On video day we'll set up ring gates for the whole end and anywhere else of special "interest".
Corner distraction video - This clip shows how we worked on her issue with corner distraction. On video day for the entry, I plan to work on this first. It's always effective and I should probably do it at the beginning of every training session to remind Gimme how to deal with it. Minutes later as we heeled into the same corner it was like we'd never done the session. <sigh> I think this is because of the false pregnancy, because it usually lasts for the whole time we are there.
Course segments video - This is the entire course, using the special bowl to reward after each segment. Before the third segment I moved the special bowl so it wouldn't be such a distraction for our "brick"-"pivot" combo. Then it was too much distraction when I wanted her to "scoot" and she couldn't even do the "center".
"Center" & pivots video - Later we had to drop everything to work on "center", reminding her how to do it. By this time I'd put the special bowl away, but it took her a bit to get it out of her head. I found the best solution was when I started putting cheese in my mouth and spitting it to her when she was in position. I think it helped because watching my face for flying cheese meant she had to be in position. To reinforce it, we also worked on our center-pivots. Of course looking up so much means she tends to crouch her rear. The flying treats also helped with keeping a CCW pivot from turning into "otto".
Sidepasses video - We did a little bit of work on this. Gimme is starting to get comfortable with actually doing sidepasses even if she doesn't yet have the cue down.
Before doing a final run-through, I heeled Gimme through the course pattern, doing only behaviors I needed to keep her on the correct side. She gave me a nice 1:15 of focused attention and I hoped we'd do well for the final run-through.
Final run-through video - By this time they had started a very noisy puppy class in the small training area right next to us. So even though it wasn't perfect, I was happy with Gimme's efforts. She does reasonably well until we get to the "otto" station, which is her favorite move. Unfortunately the receptionist's dog chooses this time to have a screeching fit. With her condition, Gimme was unable to get past this on her own. I finally chose to reward a part of an "otto", which seemed to be enough to help her get back to work. From there she did a nice job through to the end.
We have our course map for this event. It looks very doable and I'm hopeful we'll do well. Gimme is doing pretty good with our bits of training. My plan is to quit with the first passable run-through we get and not belabor things.
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