Big improvements

Realised today at breakfast how much the monkey has improved. Previously having food on the table would have had us in full on defence mode and he circled, sniffed and planned his attack. Today I realised how relaxed it was. He managed a lovely 'leave it' when I'd placed a dish of his food on the table in preparation to do a bit of training with him and I'd walked away. So, Mr Monkey, well done you!

We're working the L3 Go to Mat. Need to look at duration now as it's 1 minute. He can now go to mat and lie down in different locations.

This morning I practised his nail filing. Funny how it takes him a while to get started. Without doing a couple of hand touches he often just stares. After the touches he just seems to get it. The touch thing is what I'll often do if he gets stuck in training. Not sure if that is a bad thing or not. It seems to signify to him that he's in the game and off we go.

We also worked on 'stand' and 'sit up', where he comes back into a sit from a 'down'. The sit until released is coming along really nice too. I can now drop a handful of food in the kitchen floor and yesterday a piece of sausage in the park at 10ft from him without him moving until I give him the 'free' release cue.

Still struggling with LLW. He can loose lead walk up to a pile of food on the pavement. But without this obvious training cue, he's still boinging around on the lead like a young puppy. So still not able to go on linear walks into town. For the moment I'm doing little training walks and then the offlead training runs when we've gone out to a field in the car.

Sometimes you don't do the right thing

Argh... Well inexperience shows sometimes. I felt really bad today when I had a think after being advised by friends that perhaps my big trip up north in the car to pick up the new car wasn't good for Grey. When I did it, I thought I was doing the right thing. That it would be an opportunity to work on spending time in the car and it not being a journey to go offlead running on the beach. That was really silly of me and I won't do it again. It's not a good idea to raise the bar high and force him to get used to something. Where is the positive in that? So I put myself in a time out to think about it!

On the plus side I think he's going to be so much better in the new car. He happily gets in and sits in the back while it's parked. So later we can work on little trips out. But for now, we'll carry on with no car journeys while working on calm behaviour outside.

Another great piece of advice today was to try and LLW train when the traffic is quiet. Today was ideal because Sunday traffic round here is really low. During the week, we'll get up extra early. We went out across the road to an empty driveway/entrance to a carpark. No idea why I didn't think of this before. I think I'm slow sometimes. He was much much better. No lunging and barking. Stress levels were lower and was able to focus.

Other than that we've worked on sits and downs at home. I put his down on a long whistle so now he's got sit and down on a whistle, which hopefully will come in useful when he gets back off lead.

Also worked on watch at home.

Little steps forwards

After the last session of capturing went all weird in the bathroom, a few people advised trying him in an environment he's more used to and for me to try to be more normal rather than still and silent. So we went back to the kitchen. You know that tiled waterproof place where Grey has never ever ever had a wee or a poo?

Well, the same thing happened again when I tried waiting for him to offer a sit or a down so I could click and treat him. He went into slow and staring mode, like he thought this was a challenge to do the world's longest watch while standing. So after a while and the poor pup was drooling waiting for a treat, I switched to teaching 'target' getting him to gently bop my hand with the end of his nose. This cheered him up and we were back to happy eager training pup again. So I will carry on with that one and see if I can sharpen up his down without retraining it as a capture. His 'touch' was up to about 2 metres away, so good boy!

Couple of pictures from a nice walk in Bekesbourne. Grey still won't go in the little stream. Shame because it looks perfect for dogs.

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.