We are officially closed for the next week! Thank you all for the support and understanding as I take a much needed break, and crack down on wedding planning. ❤️
I logged back into TikTok just to make this video ✌🏼
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SUCH a great training session with Lucy this morning! Of course, this video only highlights all the good stuff, and it’s just a quick snippet into what the training session looked like. But, you must know that of course, it took us a while to get to this point! It doesn’t happen overnight (and certainly not in the 20 seconds that this video shows!) It is a process, and you have to be consistent and dedicated in order to create long-term behavior change.
Since the video only depicts the good stuff, here are some of the struggles we faced during today’s session:
1. There were some uncontrolled triggers that entered our environment, that we had to combat against. Neighbors, strollers, other dogs, cars, etc. Though we engineered the session, to the best of our ability, to set Lucy up for success, we can’t control every little thing that happens in the environment. But we CAN control how we handle our dogs! Lucy‘s mom did an excellent job of redirecting Lucy and multitasking with clicking and treating, while the neighbors (with their dog and stroller) were chatting with her.
2. There were a few incidences where Lucy DID negatively react (lunging and barking) while Rico and I were walking past. Though we try to minimize these incidences as much as possible, to promote errorless learning and prevent rehearsal of the negative behavior from occurring, there are still moments where the negative does occur. HOWEVER, Lucy redirected and recovered from those incidents much, much quicker than she ever did in the past.
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Despite these struggles, the final outcome at the end of the hour was AMAZING! And overall, Lucy did so good! I’m so proud of her mom for always putting in the work and her dedication to Lucy’s training. Way to go Lucy and @vthokie4 !!! 🤩✨
Bronx also had his last session! Yesterday was my last day training Bronxy Boy. We’ve been working together for probably eight or nine months now— maybe? (Time is a blur for me!) And I’ve loved working with his sweet family! He is still dealing with typical, drive-you-up-the-wall-and-make-you-wanna-pull-your-hair-out adolescent behaviors, but his owners have stuck to their guns with his training, and they’ve made great strides in the face of his “angsty-teenage” phase. I’m going to miss working with them❤️
This is Tucker! Tucker barks. Like, a lot 😅 We were hardly able to make it through his evaluation without being constantly interrupted by deep, resonating, demand barking.
This video was taken this morning at the end of his first training session. He spent the first twenty minutes or so barking. Loudly. So every time he did, I walked out the door and down the driveway, out of sight. I’d only come back inside when he was done barking. Once he started getting the idea, and was quiet enough for me to begin teaching him Focus and Stay, we were on track! He was really good for the remainder of the lesson, and was able to control himself for longer periods of time. Yay, Tucker!!! 🎉
