Sneak Peek: Advanced Manners working on not only choosing to leave the treats alone, but also to respond to cues in the presence of unguarded treats and to move past those unguarded treats. We started out small, then added in more complex challenges as the dogs were ready. It's really nice to be able to work on things without your dog always looking for a moment to grab all the treats!
Sneak Peek: Puppy Kindergarten! Annie’s been gradually building up her leave skills and here her owner can drop treats on the ground without Annie eating them. Excellent foundation for things falling off the counter.
Sneak Peek: Scent Skills! These dogs are working on different skills in the same set up. The first dog's handler didn't know where the two hides or 3 distractors were, so you'll here her call alert and me respond. Some times we run the dogs with the handlers knowing where the hides are so we can work on strenghtening/maintaining their alert, or be sure not to call an alert on a distractor.
Socialization can often look pretty boring. Shortly before this video started, the motor next door to us started up and Liv jumped back a foot. She recovered quickly, looking around for the source of the noise so we hung out for a bit to listen to it. You can see her get bored, then flick her ear when it revs again. Startling at something new is normal. We like to see a quick recovery. And likely next time she hears that noise she won’t startle as much.
What to do on a rainy day? Train!
Here is a little video showing one way to teach the chin rest from scratch with a puppy that's never done it before.
Why teach a chin rest?
🌟 Helps teach a hold, for when you don't want an object chewed, just held
🌟 Can be used along with a stand to teach stillness, or during vet exams
🌟 Can help teach a settled down (head down)
🌟 Can be generalizd to chin down on different surfaces/objects for really cute pictures!
I hope you enjoy watching sassy little puppy that enjoys training! Next time, I'll need to structure the end of training a bit more for her, now that I know.
Do you have a rainy day project you're working on with your dog?
2 paws up
2 Paws Up is such a foundational skill for dog sports it shows up in several places including Tricks Club, Busy Brains and Teamwork Challenge. Here's how I introduce this skill to a puppy that has never done it before.
Working on a nose freeze alert! Why?
- non-destructive (allows more fun hides, or avoides disqualification in competition)
- accurate (nose as close to source as possible)
- easy to read for the handler
- extention of sniffing behaviour (sniff it out, hold nose there)
Interested in trying scent detection? The next session of scent classes will start September 4th in Utterson!
Teaching Liv to Ring Bells to go outside. We've been working on housetraining, and it is going well, so I'd like to start teaching Liv to ring bells on cue so that she can do that to alert me to times she needs outside to potty. It took us a bit to get going as she just wanted to sit and practice ignoring the bells (oops, we'd just worked on stillness for handling!) but once I got her up and moving she did a great job targeting the bells. Now to hang them up near the door and cue her to ring them before we go out for a potty trip!
Trying to get to the weekend be like
Sneak Peek: Teamwork Challenge - Directed Jumping. The final version of this exercise is made up of several components: Send to the dog box, wait while the handler moves back, take the jump indicated by the handler and comes to sit in front of the handler. Here, teams of varing experience are working on different components of this exercise in class.
Sneak Peek: Exterior Skills, searching an exterior area with planned distractions. Short clips of one search area with 2 hides (hidden from view) and 2 distractors - tins containing bits of sausage & cheese. It can be tough to keep on task with tempting smells around but they all did very well!
