J'Anna and I met on September 24th to practice and make videos for the next level of RFE Skills tests. We've both submitted our Novice level entries and are confidently working to prepare entries for Intermediate/Advanced. There must be the novice bow, at least 3 advanced level behaviors and then up to 11 intermediate behaviors (for a total of 15 behaviors).
Warm-up video - I started the session with our new warm-up routine. This takes about the same amount of time as our prior warm-up routine, but I like the way she is actually working for the opportunity to "explore" check out the space. Gimme is getting better at it. Note how quickly and enthusiastically she turns her attention to me when the bit of "explore" is done. The center pivot wasn't very good, but we hadn't done it in awhile and she was giving me her full attention. I was pushing her too far into the corner before turning - my bad for not making the challenge easier so she could be successful and learn from it.
"Take a" bow video - I wasn't entirely happy with the bow I submitted for the novice skills test. Thus, I'm working on getting a better bow, on verbal cue (without any body movement from me) and longer duration. I think we make some pretty good improvement here. She gets rewarded with toy play for the best efforts (edited out because it takes so long). On one of these, she was doing the bow and for some dumb reason, I meant to say "wait" but "down" came out of my mouth and she dutifully complied. Good dog, stupid handler. So then she keeps going down and we have to work through it. Also, I see we did so many in a row and Gimme starts to believe "halt" is just another cue for "take-a". I'll have to be sure to break the unintended pattern before I lose "halt".
"Behind" circle handler 3x video - We barely get started when Gimme becomes distracted by the puppy class and some squeaks she hears, so we have to break off briefly to work the issue. To her credit, she sticks with me. She starts getting really wide, so I add some thrown treats to tighten her up. I had to give up on this, because she just couldn't work with the distraction.
"Around" circle handler 3x video - I decided to try the other direction and a different behavior, since she would start and end with me between her and the distracting puppy class. She did a little better with this, but was still distracted. She even gets briefly distracted while we are in the middle of tugging.
I did take her closer to the puppy class and played some eye contact game. It wasn't as helpful as it has been in the past, but I did see some improvement. She's getting close to her false pregnancy, so it may be a factor. Note: It's been 8 days since this session and the false pregnancy hasn't gotten serious yet. I'm thinking the Adaptil and ground turkey for her summer-anxiety may be relieving some false pregnancy symptoms and maybe it (the f.p.) is only evident in more stressful situations. Then again, her season came a month early and she's over 9yo, so who knows what is going on.
Various 360 & 180 pivots video - We do several different variations on the pivot theme. I thought given the distraction level, behaviors to keep her moving with me might be a better choice. It's especially hard for her to work given the squeaky puppy factor.
She did pretty good all things considered. Knowing we should be getting into false pregnancy territory, I wasn't expecting this much.
I have since learned Pawsabilities is closing their doors after 33 years. I'll miss teaching Parkour, just because I like teaching. I wasn't making very much money from it, so nothing to miss there. J'Anna and I have one more practice there and then will be moving elsewhere. We are going to try the WinStar facility. It's smaller and costs a little more (especially for me, since I didn't have to pay at Pawsabilities because I was an instructor). On a positive note, we'll have the whole place to ourselves - no squeaky puppies one ring over. Since I won't be teaching on Thursday afternoons, Nadine and I will be able to schedule some of our tracking in the afternoons. It's a bit stressful making changes, but I believe all things work out in the end...
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