Training 3/18 and 3/20

Tuesday, 3/18/08

I took Chili and Ecko to work with me on Tuesday and trained both of them in the morning. I intended to take Chili home at lunch time and bring Stoker back to train her, but ran out of enthusiasm. Big mistake since Stoker was bouncing off the walls in the evening after having been home and bored all day.

Chili worked on weave poles and scent articles. I started off with six closed weave poles and her toy, which really gets her running fast and wild. The faster and wilder she is, the more she tends to pop out of the weave poles. I got her doing six reliably at a fast and furious pace pretty quickly, then added two more poles and worked on doing eight poles for the rest of the session. I think it will be a good long while before she is doing twelve poles reliably. Sigh.....

We also worked on scent articles. With the high rate of reinforcement she is getting (cookie on the article AND cookie for bringing it back) her attitude is much brighter and more confident. She find the correct article 100% of the time, thanks to baiting it with a treat, but will still sometimes opt to bring a different (unscented) article back. I let her know this is "wrong" in as matter of fact a manner as possible and encourage her to bring the one I want. Her success rate is gradually getting higher, so I think she is beginning to under stand.

Ecko got lots of cookies for standing again. Nothing too exciting.

Thursday 3/20/08

I missed training yesterday because the chiropractor came to Pup-A-Razzi and I had Chili, Decker and Ecko all adjusted. None of them are lame or unsound, but I feel it's the preventative maintenance that helps keep them that way. Each of the adult dogs gets adjusted once or twice a month depending on who needs it most and Ecko gets adjusted twice a month to make sure she grows correctly and doesn't develop any imbalances.

Chili worked on scent articles today. She seems to be slowly progressing, but her attitude was nice and happy again today. We did a few laps of informal heeling too. Since she had a chiropractic adjustment yesterday, she is not supposed to do anything too physically taxing for a couple of days.

Stoker work on conformation training: self-stacking with a click for wagging tail, hand-stacking once or twice with a click and release to a cookie and practicing gaiting by sending her ahead to a series of targets laid out in the pattern of a square or triangle or..... She has fun with this when it is jus the two of us and there are no judges in sight.

Ecko worked on targeting. She is getting really good at this and does not need a cookie under the target any more. We also worked on scent articles by hiding a cookie in a metal tea ball and mixing it in with several other tea balls that did not have scent on them or cookies inside. She thought this game was great fun and was even picking up the correct ball and bringing it to me for the cookie. We ended up with a little play retrieving and tugging.