RFE practice (109)

I'm still working on the clips I need for the Intermediate-Advanced Skills test. We have a lot of clips for the intermediate part, but still need to train the advanced skills.

"Take-a" warm-up video - We haven't done "take-a" bow for a long time. Gimme remembered it, but her heiney was swinging out badly.

"Otto" retrain video - I tried retraining "otto" using the guides. She didn't seem comfortable with them, so I didn't do much of it. I made them into a larger circle for her, which helped a little. I didn't want her worried about it, so we only did 3 repetitions. Later we did it again with the guides open even more, so it was almost a half-circle.

"Back" 4 steps video - One of the advanced skills we are training is Back Away in Center 4x. Gimme must move into "center" position, then back away a minimum 4 feet and wait while I return to her. She backs well to a target, so it should come quickly. She just has to learn to put the sequence together. I also have to start going to her to reward her, so she understands to stay put. She makes good progress in this little session. It occurs to me I should train the return-to-her separately.

Motivating "otto" video - J'Anna gave Gimme a new toy for Christmas. I decided to put peanut butter in it and try using it to motivate Gimme to do "otto". It worked better than I expected. After just two tosses, I was able to move the toy off my person and set it on a nearby table. Once Gimme understood what the payoff was going to be - she became an otto-machine. In fact she got so enthused, she started doing multiples. I was able to record Opposite backward circles/around 2x, which is very close to being usable for our advanced skills. Next time we should get it easily.

Overall it was a good session.