Training good news/venting thread.

That is awesome! Hooray for Juno!

Juno is doing great!

Love this thread!! What great successes from everyone.

I bought a treadmill off of craigslist yesterday. Had the first training session on it yesterday for the girls and it went pretty much how I thought it would. Zinga was bouncing all over and thought it was the best thing ever and Zuma needed more convincing that it wasn't a blackhole that was going to swallow her up.

By the end of the session, both girls were more than happy walking at a slow pace on it! It was hilarious because they kept trying to cut into each other's turns. Downstays aren't nearly as much fun as walking on the treadmill!

The next part is weaning away from so many treats.. Zinga is pretty funny, she'll be walking, I'll give her a treat and she has to stop walking to chew it, so she nearly slides off of the back of the treadmill every time. Silly girly.

Gambit is apparently hitting social maturity again. He went through a very obvious personality change back in May, so I thought I was safe. Oh, no, coyboy has more tricks up his sleeve.

Suddenly, he has become, the MAN! He hikes his leg to the sky, kicks dirt up, humps Folly and doesn't take poop from anyone! I tell him to do something, and he usually does it, but he looks right at me and does this high pitched shrieky noise before he does. I believe a liberal translation might be "F you, Mommy."

All in all, he's a brat. But hopefully this new confidence holds.

Mia alerted a hide that was 4 feet off the ground today! That's the tallest so far and I've been worried about how she'd do with something so much higher than her head is. But she was fine and worked it very well.

Aeri started bringing a toy back to me to play instead of hoarding it for herself to chew today - she's a very possessive dog and it was sooooo cool to see!

We are borrowing a Manners Minder from Sara and an on-the-go pop up crate from Megan (apparently I am the cheap friend who never buys anything :/). Frodo isn't scared of the MM anymore, but he doesn't want to be enclosed with it

Tonight he spent his whole dinner in the crate with the setting on variable up to 7 seconds down stay mode. The only reason I knew he was done was that he popped his head out of the crate and barked at me. I'm pretty sure he way saying "Hey lady, put more foods in this!"

Then when I put it away in the corner he wandered by, saw it, and started whacking it and woofling at it for more food. Now it lives in the cupboard.

I can't wait to get my own MM, oh the possibilities for keeping Frodo busy/out of sight reinforcement while I work with puppy!

Argh Fred not really training but he started panting tonight during training! I remember Bodhi's first pant lol, I took a photo of it!

Haven't done much over Xmas, but he was fab tonight. Just went over stuff, worked on his retrieve. Turns out tugging is MUCH more fun than hot dog. Now if only we could transfer it outdoors... The weather has kept us inside so much, the outdoors is just soooooooo distracting! He is amazing at searching for things too, that big fat gundog nose. Be a great drugs dog! Will get some tripe defrosted for some tracking this weekend I think!

Forgot about this thread!! Both girls are jogging on the treadmill without a problem now. Obviously keeping it really short for Zinga because of the repetitive motion, but she loves it!

Just a little update.
Merlin (through what I believe to be Sara and Lind's voodoo magic) does NOT do luring well.
He understood the rules of "no lookie/no cookie" and his basic leave it exercises at puppy class as... "it's not good to look at the food or follow it so the minute she is holding food I sit and look at her".. when I do entice him enough to follow it..it doesn't stick. He doesn't really know what his body is doing while he is sniffin food lol

I was getting quite frustrated honestly.. but I finally decided to try shaping and he is catching on SO quickly! I'm so proud of him!!
I totally free shaped his sit and down and while they are a bit sloppy, he GETS IT. He is offering them both on hand signal now and STAYING there until his release cue.
and best part? He loves the shaping game and loves the clicker now! It's only been 2 weeks or so with short sessions for mealtimes but he is really improving.

It was so frustrating at first. I thought he didn't understand.. especially with down which he had to learn 100% from scratch. It started with him just nodding his head down, kind of leaning down, moving his foot, and it all just clicked and he started testing and playing the "get the click game" and it was just so exciting! WHEN WE FINALLY GOT A DOWN I NEARLY CRIED! LOL and he was so excited to get the jackpot!

I mean, he has an interesting down for sure lol it starts as a sit and he slides his butt across the floor into a down :rofl1: but it's a down and he learned it all on his own!

Right now I can put him in a sit/down and jump around my apartment, say all kinds of things, turn my back.. and he stays! Wiggling his tail the whole time like it's the best game ever waiting for me to say "POP"

I think shaping is going to be our new game and it's exciting but scary.. but fun!
He thinks it's the best game ever and I like working this way with him.. yay for shaping!

This is totally how Hudson learned his down by sliding his butt back. I finally had to take him outside onto the grass for him to learn he actually has to move his front feet.

I love, love, love that your release cue is POP

SNIPE DID HER FIRST TOTALLY INDEPENDENT HANDSTAND! Today. In class. The one I was teaching. TWICE! The whole class was amazed and I was beside myself happy. We've been trying to get one for weeks.

WTG Snipe!!! I'm jealous - I don't think we will ever get away from the wall LOL. Though people seem impressed enough by that, and Kimma seems to enjoy doing it

I know this is sorta small potatoes around here, but Squash got his second qualifying leg towards his RN today.



What I am really proud of, though, is not so much the ribbons or the qualifying score, but this: On the far wall of the room the ring was in, opposite where the course started, there were a bunch of pictures and ribbons from students of the venue hanging all over the wall. It looked like a clown threw up on the wall. Squash is a nosy dog, and in a new environment he likes to check things out, and we obviously weren't allowed in the ring before our turn, and he became utterly fascinated by the clown vomit the second we stepped foot into the ring and my stomach just sank.

Somehow we got through the first couple of exercises although he was just zeroed in on the wall. But then... I actually just let him sniff them for a second since we were right next to them, then asked and was permitted to redo the exercise we were at, and he completely bounced back and completed the course like a champ. He even ignored a couple of dogs snarking outside the ring a few exercises later.

I'm happy to have the leg and I'm happy to have the ribbons, but I'm mostly super proud of him for getting himself together. It's really hard for him and something we've really struggled with. VICTORY.

Good training choice! YAY Squashie!

Did a bit of tracking with Fred today and he was so not feeling it. Need the trainers advice really... He's "track happy" and just wants to sniff and not really bothered by the goal. Tried treats, tug and tripe. He liked the tripe most of all, but was more interested in skipping the scent and going for the boyfriend.

In other news, we are signed up to start his bronze canine good citizen certificate in feb!! Found a dog club about 45 mins away and they do evening classes! Can get him doing agility too in time

Aheheh, thanks, I was bracing for "You let him do WHAT on the course?!" from people, but... honestly, I've done the thing where I try to force him to complete a course despite being distracted by something like that and it is just an absolute disaster. So I decided "welp, if I don't let him sniff we're probably done for anyway, so as long as we're standing here I might as well just let him do it and if we lose points, we lose points."

Here my vent/good news.

I was at a Rally trial this weekend. I wanted to get 2 Qs to finish up Cohen's RE title.

Our first run caught me off guard - I didn't realize we were next. So I rushed to the start, Cohen was distracted and uninterested but I started anyways. The first sign was a send over jump - Cohen's favourite. I started, cued a heel, told her to out & jump but she wasn't paying close enough attention to hear me, so she wandered right past the jump at my side. I ask to re-do the station, but there are no re-dos in Excellent so we NQd at the first station. Yay...

Then I left the trial to go practice some flyball with my team. Cohen ran well solo, but was distracted and chasing a bit while passing. I was feeling pretty disheartened with her group performance right after our NQ at Rally aka The Easiest Sport Ever.

Back to the Rally trial to do one more run. I'm a bit better prepared this time. Cohen was a bit spaced out, and I felt like she may have dropped her bum on a left finish - forward so I wasn't sure we Qd... again. We were the last team to go and right after us was the ribbon presentation. I wasn't sure if we should have gone back into the ring for the presentation, since, yeah, I thought we might have NQd. I asked, and the steward chuckled and said yeah, we Qd, come on in. Turns out we had a perfect score, and scored HIC, and beat another lovely team who scored 100 because we were faster.

The perfect score almost makes up for the NQ at the start of the day. Though I would have preferred to QQ. God, I'm such a perfectionist.

For the first time tonight at rally, Squash actually went by the distractions on the offset figure 8 with distractions without... getting distracted. I could weep.

Started our Intro to Nosework class last night and I was super happy with how it all went! I think Rider will really enjoy it. There were a few times when he was really using his little sniffer. I was nervous that he was going to have focus issues with other dogs, but he locked onto me for most of the class, and I was very pleased.

Our last hide was a box on top of a box tipped upright, so the hide was just above his nose when he looked up. When he found it, he was circling the box and sniffing, and the trainer goes "So, how scared is he going to be when he knocks that over?" And just as I said, "Moderately scared," Rider grabbed the corner of the box and dropped it on the ground. We were all very amused.