Wouldn't you know? Poor planning on my part. The Flip ran out of power and I had only one AA battery, not the necessary two.
But we did Flip the first couple of warm up exercises and they are fun to watch.
SHAPING
First. Shaping Nonsense. Shaping Lily to touch Dale's foot.....and then some variations on that theme.
Starting off just as we did with Target: Level 1
Making it easy for Lily to find the target.
Dale is on his toes (no pun intended).
Once Lily understands about Dale's LEFT foot
he offers her his right one.
Now Dale ups the ante.
He uses Chutes & Ladders and begins moving his foot lower and lower.
Then he asks for Two-fers.
Playing around with Shaping Nonsense.
Dog AND trainer are getting in some good shaping practice.
ZEN
We always like to begin our sessions with some form of ZEN. Dale decides to strengthen Duration. Lily has played Floor Zen On the Road with Dale to 60 seconds. So we decide to have some fun with the treats on Lily's leg.
How many kibble is that?
How patient is Lily?
DOWN STAY
Then we did more Chutes and Ladders. First Down. Down Stay for Duration. Down Stay for Distance. Verbal cue and handsignal. Mixing up the two. Down Stay for 20 seconds. Down Stay for 10'.
DOWN
With treats on the counter beside Dale. Down. Click. Step to counter to get the treat.
SIT and SIT STAY
Then Sit. Oops! Lily has forgotten how to Sit. Is it the cue? Is it the handsignal? What to do?
If you use the cue and DO NOT get the behavior – well, in my book, once is a fluke. Twice is a problem.
When you find yourself repeating a cue, or you cue a behavior and get something else or something even slightly not-right, STOP USING THE CUE!
Go back, retrain the behavior, reattach the cue, and go on from there.
Steps: Introduction: CUES
We remembered this "rule" from last week. So that's exactly what we did. Dale re-taught SIT from scratch. And Lily figured it out. Sit Stay to 9 seconds.
TARGET/DELIVER/RETRIEVE
What other behaviors are related to Target: Level 1? From touching Dale's foot, we moved on to DELIVER: L2. We had already done some prep work on this, having Lily touch Dale's open palm and then, using C&L, changing the plane of his hand.
Dale soon had Lily touching his palm resting in his lap. He waited for Two-fers (they both know this game well) and soon had built up to the requisite 3-seconds. No cue yet, though.
From Target: Level 1 we lead in to TARGET: L2, which is teaching Lily "Paws Up". We had done some of this last week, so first it was a review for both Lily and Dale to get the CUED behavior on the green chair. They moved next to the counter and Lily accomplished Paws Up from 5'. Then on into the dining room for another Paws Up on another counter.
By this time Dale was sending Lily out 5' to accomplish the behavior. So they moved outside to the wall and then the tree. Dale got 2 seconds of duration and then up to 5 seconds before we ended this exercise.
Yet another outgrowth of the Target behavior is RETRIEVE: Level 2. Dale had Lily touching keys, his wallet, a metal coaster, a candle, a collar. Then Lily volunteered a nice gentle "grab" so we went on (this is Level 3). It is our plan for Dale to proceed as far as possible in teaching RETRIEVE... Lily already has a Level 7 RETRIEVE. We will use this one behavior to give Dale advanced training experience.
COME
When training at my house, Dale gets many opportunities to call Lily out of play with Shayla. Today didn't disappoint. He is getting 20' recalls to a front out of play and often away from me. Good practice.
WATCH
Time for some WATCH. Perhaps 5 seconds duration before we decided to call it a day.
On Wednesday we will get back to shaping GO to MAT and CRATE and begin shaping DISTANCE. Dale will introduce STAND and HANDLING, planning the session on his own.
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