RFE practice (91)

 This is our practice session from 2 weeks ago.

Pivot-in-a-bucket video - I started with a little heeling warm-up, clicking for her better moments of heeling, then we went straight into freeshaping her pivot-in-a-bucket. I'm ignoring her when she puts her back feet in. I find I have to reshape this behavior every session, but it progresses faster each time. This was hard with all the dogs barking in daycare. Still she got to where she was doing a full pivot and she did it several times. I am careful to only give her rewards when her feet are both in the bucket. She had a tendency to spin herself out of the bucket, but not as much now. I think this is coming along very nicely.

Pivot-on-the-can video - I went straight from pivot-in to pivot-on, using the same prop. I wouldn't ordinarily do them together, especially not if both were behaviors still being trained. However, the pivot-on-the-can is a well-established behavior, so I wanted to keep it fresh as a distinct behavior. After all, the prop itself is part of the cue, so I did this to reinforce listening for the cue. In this case it's "can-pivot".

Center-back video - Gimme prefers backing up behaviors, so she has a lot of behaviors using her super power. My intent was to work on backing up to do a behavior at a distance, but we got distracted away from it. J'Anna suggested I have her back and then wait in position, while I go to her. We'd never done it before, so it wasn't elegant, but she did do it.

Platform work 1 video - This is a continuation of an idea I fell onto while we were at the hotel during the barn hunt trial weekend. The idea is to gradually expose her to a change in my position relative to hers, so I can get her to stop, facing "away" 180°, instead of treating it like a full spin. I think this will work, but it's only the second time I've tried it, so I'm still working out the kinks. I'm also looking for a little more endurance in the touch.

Platform work 2 video - This is a separate session of the same concept, but on the other side. It's a much shorter session and I get further, but only because we'd already gone through it some. Fortunately Gimme is brilliant and readily transfers things she learned one way to another way. BTW do note we are using stacked platforms so it's more noticeable to her when she has a foot off.

Center front pivot video - When we go CCW she is more likely to get ahead of me, so I was trying out turning back to see if it helped - it didn't. Spitting treats to her when she's precisely in position makes the most difference.

Freeshaping backward weaves video - We've been making good progress with this, but then we had an unfortunate experience here and it has cost us a bit. Gimme tried to "bacon" on a cone and slipped and jabbed herself in the tummy with the cone. After that she was quite worried about it and I spent several minutes encouraging her to just stand next to the evil second cone.

Since then we've practiced with our bleach bottles. They are much shorter, so she won't be able to hurt herself in the same way. We actually introduced a third cone the last session. It took her a little bit to understand what I wanted, but when she did, she got a huge jackpot.

I don't want to risk Gimme getting hurt again, so I've come up with 3 new bottles to use. They are about the size of bleach bottles and I can fill them with water (don't want to carry a bunch of bleach in the car). I'll make a couple stripes around them with white duct tape, so they are more visible.

I've just learned we are loosing our Thursday morning practice time at Pawsabilities. There is someone coming to teach Freestyle and RallyFrEe at that time. I may take her Freestyle class if she accepts the instructor discount; otherwise her prices are too high for this area. So now I'll have to change all my scheduling with everyone around. I have a plan for tracking with Nadine, but haven't gotten an answer from J'Anna about whether she could practice on Tuesdays. Cross your fingers.