Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Summer Project!?

Well Cheetah and I are continuing to deal with her rebooting and it's going well in practice, we will see how things go in the next few weeks when we start trialing again. In the meantime, I have decided to take on a special summer project. I really liked Susan Garrett's 2x2 weave dvd and would really like to train them. The problem is Cheetah already knows them, and while I could tweak her entrances - I am really not prepared to screw that up. So - I am taking my brothers 8 yo Golden, Max and seeing if I can get him to weave with this method. I tried it today for the first time, and we had two sessions. Let me start be saying if he gets this either Susan or I are geniuses because he doesn't have an operant bone in his body. But he lives on the same property so, I have easy access to him.

I finally got a couple of tenative passes through the weave poles, but it was a bit contrived on my part ( leaning - having the leash in front of him through the poles, I even lured him a couple of times!)I know that is not correct proceedure, and I love freeshaping, and tell my students that they must be paitent and wait it out - but even I can only stand to watch a dog sit there and stare at me for so long before I do SOMETHING to clue him in that he is to move in this direction!

I will keep you posted on our progress - I may even tape some if I get him doing anything at all.

I think I need to power up the clicker with him and try some sort of shaping in general ( box lid - cone - something - ANYTHING ) maybe I can get a few synapses firing that way!

Wish me luck