Little steps backwards

I thought I would re-teach Grey the cues 'sit' and 'down'. When I first taught his at 7.5 weeks, I lured him into position before click treating. I have always had a doubt that he doesn't fully get 'down' as he often needed repeat cues. I'd since had advice that it might be better to teach 'sit' and 'down' through capturing, i.e. CT when the pup does the action all by himself rather than luring with food which would then mean having to fade the treat.

So off into the smallest room in the house, the bathroom. Here I was told that a puppy might do all manner of things, but eventually will either sit or lie down. And at that point you can CT and the game begins. No verbalising or signalling anything. Just let the pup work it out for himself and when he does the action again, food rains from the sky. How cool is that?

I expected Grey to get this quickly. He's been clicker trained since little, so he knows that click = food/toy/belly rub etc. What was surprising is his energy levels went really low and he took to just staring at me. He did work through a series of say ten 'downs' but he didn't seem happy. He kept looking at me like I was crazy! i.e. 'what are we doing here in this room?'

Ah, well. Might have just been an off day.

Did I mention he had lost some baby teeth all on his own? He's growing up. Oh and he weighed in at 20.2kg!!! At 19 weeks he's now 1kg over his previous progress. He was always the same kg in weight in as many weeks.