Big month!
Ravioli is still on his fancy amino acid level food and eating it, mostly, willingly. We have seen some slow gains in his willingness to train!
Ginny had her first Rally Master trial, and her scores on paper were not so great, partly because the judge was not a fan of her boing-level pop stands!
And Loot had another agility trial and was so incredibly happy and eager to work. He had one run where there was a squeak before he went into the ring, and that was definitely hard on him, but he recovered incredibly well and ran like it never happened.
And we still have Miss Breezy for service dog training work. She's doing a great job at rebuilding her skills and learning how to settle in different environments.
Silence = Try again?
In case you've missed it, I have a Ring Confidence training group on Facebook! Here are a few of the posts from this last month:
- Make sure you think about how you want your dogs to view silence and formality. This is especially crucial in obedience! Silence cannot mean the dog is wrong! If your dog gets frantic in pauses, we need to look at how you are shaping! Click here to read.
- Stop feeding your start line! Or really, stop rewarding in the middle of a chain. Click here to read.
- Make sure you give your dog acclimation time before starting training. This is true even for those really pushy dogs. Click here.
October Training Videos
Here are 9 videos from the past month's daily uploads of training. Just click on the picture to be taken to youtube. (And if you prefer the non-music versions, head to facebook or instagram!) I hope these videos give you some helpful tips to try or inspire you to train something new!
Breezy has really been working on her holding skills this last month. Before we could really start with the dumbbell, we had to first tackle her ability to do a thing even when the food is right there. This video looks at doing her chin rest with my zen hand out.
Freya Kitty worked on setting to a cone from heeling. And then the hard part of coming back into heel position after her send!
Loot did a little bit of work on his setup. I'm making it fun here by doing a stocky, suspenseful game before calling him into heel, one of the things we'll be talking about in my Up Your Game class.
Ginny did a fun session with a lot of heeling games. I find this the easiest way to work on duration before the reward. Throw in a game about half the time you feel like handing over a cookie, and grow it from there.
Even though Ravi is doing a bit better since changing his food, he still has some associations with training not always being an easy choice for him. I make sure to give him plenty of acclimation and time to think about it before starting. I don't want to overwhelm him.
Ginny also did Rally Master for the first time and unfortunately found a judge who did not enjoy her pop stands. She lost 15 points on pop stands between the 2 trials! I've resumed work on Ravioli, learning it because obedience should be fun!
And we spent more time retraining Ginny's running dogwalk since it broke late this summer. Her dogwalk mat was lava, so we've been experimenting with the stride regulator. It's still a work in progress, but she at least hit all her contacts at her trial this month!
Breezy needed an introduction to foot targets and learning how to respect the boundaries. This is a crucial foundation before going to training position changes on them. If your dog steps off their foot target when changing positions, make sure you've done this type of work first.
Here's Ginny doing a minute of flow work, where I combine exercises so there's no start and stop to each one. I use 2 cones and a dumbbell in this 1-minute session.
Current Classes
Class starts today for Up Your Game, grab it fast if you want to follow along!
Obedience can be intense, it can be fast, it can be creative, and most importantly it can be joyful for both you and the dog!
In this class we will look at using a few simple games that you can build into a variety of training exercises to bring more engagement, creativity, and joy into your training.
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Learn how to teach the dog to leave the reward to get the reward! Build an eager partner without rewards in your hand. Dog sport prep for training skills (like sends!) and getting ready to trial with the reward at a distance.
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Follow me on the social media platform of your choice to try and catch all my daily training videos. I hope they inspire you to try something fun with your dog! And join my free facebook group on building ring confidence for dog sports!
