Monday, January 9, 2012

Level 2 and now I need a break

Reyna is doing great...we rocked right through Level 2 Zen, I need to try a few Comeafters and I am working on sippy cups being a default "leave it" so far we are up to I stick a sippy cup in her face and she backs away. It took her several short sessions to stop bopping the cup with her nose. I finally tried mark/treat as soon as she sees the sippy cup but before she makes a move for it and after three reps a light bulb went off "oh this is not touch cup then back away, it's don't touch cup, why didn't you say so in the first place?"

I also increased the difficulty on her standard "leave it" cue, I started with just tossing one treat onto the floor which she is great at and worked up to throwing a handful of treats at her as I said "leave it" and she just sat there pretending there weren't cheerios all over her feet YES!

We are on to Level 2 Focus, she breezed through steps one and two with no problem thanks to the work we had done before the books came in, and she can do the duration on step three but it calls for a cue, I had started to add the cue "watch" before, but I'd like to get something a little more unique....maybe "mira". It's really awesome to see a dog that couldn't hold eye contact for 2 seconds without whining and shifting around lock in for 6-8 seconds I say yes and toss a treat and she immediately snaps her head back to attention!!!

I've added the cue "clean up" to the fork in the bucket trick. Remembering how she went over threshold when I tried to add "watch" a while a ago and made sure to say it very soft and singsongy right as she was picking up the fork. She didn't miss a beat and repeated the trick 6 times, she missed the bucket 1 time but immediately picked up the fork and plopped it in. We'll do that for several more days before I'll say the cue before she heads for the fork :)

On a worse note I think I need a break or something, Reyna seems to be keeping the levels work and the Rally class work straight with no problem, but I am finding it hard to stick to 5-8 reps at one set criteria. Reyna hasn't suffered from my backsliding yet, but she will if I don't pull it together quickly...

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