One thing I have figured out from our recall course is that over time Missy Liz has figured out that she likes food the best so will refuse to tug or play if she knows food is around,....she really is the smartest dog!! Usually food is a good reward for her anyway because it helps her calm and think, and she is one of the dogs that spends way too much time way too excited. ;-).
I did decide to work with her on learning to tug with the distraction of her breakfast. We have a lot of training to do with distractions so this is a good start!
I am so sorry for Crickets barking, when I did this again this morning I left Cricket and Breeze sitting next to us in a down stay and they minded their manners much better, but I wanted to capture the beginnings of shaping Liz to tug.
I was suprised at how fast Lizzie got the idea that we had changed some things and she needed to focus and play to get her breakfast! Poor Liz being forced to play, LOL!
Showing posts with label lizzie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lizzie. Show all posts
Progress Report on our Recall training
So far I have found Susan Garretts recall course to be excellent and I am so glad I signed up for it. So you want to know how our recall training is going? ...well, let me tell you anyway! hahahaha!
We of course started off strong, and all three of the dogs were just little super stars. They all had their strengths and weaknesses, and some things were easier for one dog, and some things were easier for the other dogs, but overall...to be truthful, sweet little Breeze actually was a little behind the others.
The last week though.....the games are using a lot more distractions and doing some testing of the skills we have been working, and poor Lizzie....well, she is once again looking like a special needs girl,...sigh...she simply is not ready for such things. I think Liz and I will be staying at the basic foundation steps for a LONG time. It makes me feel so good too (NOT!) when SG said that your dog is a reflection of your skills as a trainer. YEP, I realize that...at this point I just want to know what I am missing with the Lizard. Maybe as we keep working and Liz gets to the point she can do the higher level games and we work through our distraction list it will all become clearer.
This is where I really feel it is hard to work with three dogs....I have the other dogs working around their highest level distractions and they are doing great with that, and poor Liz is really doing well...considering... if I was only working with Liz and had no one to compare her to...then it would be easier to just concentrate on how many great strides she has made, but the other dogs make it hard to not see how far we still have to go.
Tonight Susan Garrett had her Distraction Webinar which she has said she plans on packaging and selling. I have totally loved almost everything else I have bought from Susan and I have bought it all!!! Not so sure about the webinar, unless the second one has a lot more info and some more helpful ideas, not sure I found it helpful enough to consider buying.
The first two coaching calls were great and left me feeling like I had learned so much and gave me some great things to think about that have really helped our training, and I always love listening to Susan- she is a great speaker but with this webinar tonight after it was over I just felt frustrated and it all seemed like the same things you hear from everyone about dog training over and over and over, really good sound principles, but if I really knew how to apply it we would have fixed her issues long ago. Maybe the webinar will seem much better when it is edited and I can sit down and listen to it without it disconnecting or the sound cutting off every few minutes.
Maybe I am looking for more concrete answers, or maybe I just am not getting it yet.. or maybe it was the fact that the webinar which was over the Internet kept freezing and disconnecting, so I missed a lot of it.
One thing that really made me think and I would recommend checking out is an article that was in the last Teamwork Ebook SG released and it was in Clean Run March '06, called "But it is Not a Border Collie" I found that really interesting talking about how if a dog is under aroused they are way more prone to worrying about the environment, or they won't work in the heat, or they won't want to work if other dogs are barking and if they are overstimulated they can not think or work and how you can help your dog to find a more comfortable middle zone where they are excited enough to work at a high level.
We of course started off strong, and all three of the dogs were just little super stars. They all had their strengths and weaknesses, and some things were easier for one dog, and some things were easier for the other dogs, but overall...to be truthful, sweet little Breeze actually was a little behind the others.
The last week though.....the games are using a lot more distractions and doing some testing of the skills we have been working, and poor Lizzie....well, she is once again looking like a special needs girl,...sigh...she simply is not ready for such things. I think Liz and I will be staying at the basic foundation steps for a LONG time. It makes me feel so good too (NOT!) when SG said that your dog is a reflection of your skills as a trainer. YEP, I realize that...at this point I just want to know what I am missing with the Lizard. Maybe as we keep working and Liz gets to the point she can do the higher level games and we work through our distraction list it will all become clearer.
This is where I really feel it is hard to work with three dogs....I have the other dogs working around their highest level distractions and they are doing great with that, and poor Liz is really doing well...considering... if I was only working with Liz and had no one to compare her to...then it would be easier to just concentrate on how many great strides she has made, but the other dogs make it hard to not see how far we still have to go.
Tonight Susan Garrett had her Distraction Webinar which she has said she plans on packaging and selling. I have totally loved almost everything else I have bought from Susan and I have bought it all!!! Not so sure about the webinar, unless the second one has a lot more info and some more helpful ideas, not sure I found it helpful enough to consider buying.
The first two coaching calls were great and left me feeling like I had learned so much and gave me some great things to think about that have really helped our training, and I always love listening to Susan- she is a great speaker but with this webinar tonight after it was over I just felt frustrated and it all seemed like the same things you hear from everyone about dog training over and over and over, really good sound principles, but if I really knew how to apply it we would have fixed her issues long ago. Maybe the webinar will seem much better when it is edited and I can sit down and listen to it without it disconnecting or the sound cutting off every few minutes.
Maybe I am looking for more concrete answers, or maybe I just am not getting it yet.. or maybe it was the fact that the webinar which was over the Internet kept freezing and disconnecting, so I missed a lot of it.
One thing that really made me think and I would recommend checking out is an article that was in the last Teamwork Ebook SG released and it was in Clean Run March '06, called "But it is Not a Border Collie" I found that really interesting talking about how if a dog is under aroused they are way more prone to worrying about the environment, or they won't work in the heat, or they won't want to work if other dogs are barking and if they are overstimulated they can not think or work and how you can help your dog to find a more comfortable middle zone where they are excited enough to work at a high level.
Challenge report for the week!
As for the challenge this week I worked the dogs at Target at the entrance on Monday, then took them to the park while my daughter was at swim practice. On Tuesday we went to an outdoor cafe for lunch. There were some people there from the dog club with a bunch of dogs my dogs didn't know, and I was able to have some other people do the Collar Grab game with my dogs, I was able to work the dogs with distractions and also bring out their mats and have them work on just hanging out and staying calm. As a bonus someone held my dogs for me while I went in for some lunch so they got some practice staying with a friendly stranger. All good things.
Wednesday we had a private agility lesson. In the spirit of solidifying more basic behaviors I asked Deanna if we could look at some weave pole entrances and I wanted to working on handling my flailing arms!!!! I am just so used to using my arms I do not know when I should be pointing to jumps and where I should just run and expect my dogs to know to catch the jumps. So check it out, we did all these short exercises with NO ARMS at all. DEFINITELY out of my comfort zone!
We did a really fun weave exercise just setting up lots of different amounts of weaves and numbers of poles at different angles, then as the dog was leaving one set of poles, I reminded them to look for the next. This was all to help so the dog understands WEAVE UNTIL THERE ARE NO POLES!! Basically I would like the weaves to be seen as ONE obstacle and no matter what I do, pull off laterally, or stop or decelerate they should keep weaving once they are in the poles. Breeze did pretty good, which is not surprising because she learned with the 2X2 method so it is looks sort of like that.
I feel like we identified some interesting things with Liz, she has a habit of running in front of me and then whirling toward me and barking and yelling at me. A typical herding behavior a dog would use to stop sheep or cattle. I think I have always worried that it meant Liz was getting stressed so I would stop and connect with her and then tell her where we were going. Somewhere along the way I think Liz has decided that she has to stop me and then get the next directions for where we are going instead of understanding that by me running toward something she already has the info she needs, just keep going little Liz!. Pretty frustrating for both of us. The fix for this....I keep running even if I end up running over her a few times, yikes, I think there is a fall coming. We did a few of the sequences a few times and Liz seemed to settle down and seem more confident and she seemed to be figuring out that she needed to keep going. It will be intresting to see if this was a one night thing or if being aware of this will help long term ;-).
My last HUGE out of my own comfort zone thing was my computer BLEW UP and I had to get another one. Of course I had not backed up anything. Yep, how stupid was that??? My IPOD has tons of things I want on it and now I do not know how I can get anything else on it without it syncing to itunes and having all my good stuff erased. Then apparently Windows 7 does not work with outlook express and it took me like two days to figure out how to use the Windows Mail. I hate change. Of course it took me days to figure out what program I could use to edit videos and the video editing is a lot nicer but it took me some time to figure it out. So I do think the dogs and I have both met our challenge and expanded our comfort zones a bit.
Wednesday we had a private agility lesson. In the spirit of solidifying more basic behaviors I asked Deanna if we could look at some weave pole entrances and I wanted to working on handling my flailing arms!!!! I am just so used to using my arms I do not know when I should be pointing to jumps and where I should just run and expect my dogs to know to catch the jumps. So check it out, we did all these short exercises with NO ARMS at all. DEFINITELY out of my comfort zone!
We did a really fun weave exercise just setting up lots of different amounts of weaves and numbers of poles at different angles, then as the dog was leaving one set of poles, I reminded them to look for the next. This was all to help so the dog understands WEAVE UNTIL THERE ARE NO POLES!! Basically I would like the weaves to be seen as ONE obstacle and no matter what I do, pull off laterally, or stop or decelerate they should keep weaving once they are in the poles. Breeze did pretty good, which is not surprising because she learned with the 2X2 method so it is looks sort of like that.
I feel like we identified some interesting things with Liz, she has a habit of running in front of me and then whirling toward me and barking and yelling at me. A typical herding behavior a dog would use to stop sheep or cattle. I think I have always worried that it meant Liz was getting stressed so I would stop and connect with her and then tell her where we were going. Somewhere along the way I think Liz has decided that she has to stop me and then get the next directions for where we are going instead of understanding that by me running toward something she already has the info she needs, just keep going little Liz!. Pretty frustrating for both of us. The fix for this....I keep running even if I end up running over her a few times, yikes, I think there is a fall coming. We did a few of the sequences a few times and Liz seemed to settle down and seem more confident and she seemed to be figuring out that she needed to keep going. It will be intresting to see if this was a one night thing or if being aware of this will help long term ;-).
My last HUGE out of my own comfort zone thing was my computer BLEW UP and I had to get another one. Of course I had not backed up anything. Yep, how stupid was that??? My IPOD has tons of things I want on it and now I do not know how I can get anything else on it without it syncing to itunes and having all my good stuff erased. Then apparently Windows 7 does not work with outlook express and it took me like two days to figure out how to use the Windows Mail. I hate change. Of course it took me days to figure out what program I could use to edit videos and the video editing is a lot nicer but it took me some time to figure it out. So I do think the dogs and I have both met our challenge and expanded our comfort zones a bit.
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