Today I took Bella to the barn again. I had made it very clear to the lady that I was going to take a break from working with her dog, and just work on my own thing with our dogs.
So I packed her crate today, and a blanket too. Took lots of treats and prepared to basically spend the whole 2 hours there beside her crate with her. I covered all 4 sides of her crate, except for one corner, where I was sitting - this corner was facing away from any of the other dogs, into a wall. From there I just treated for looking at me, offering eye contact, downing and sitting (in her crate) and behaving. All went well.
When she was doing well like that, I took one side off of the crate so she could see out, asked the same thing, and then eventually a half of the side closest to the dogs working. Any time she barked or whined, the cover went back down.
This worked well, and I felt like I was able to better control how close she was getting to her threshold. We're going to keep doing this, hopefully, until she can sit in her crate with no covers on it at all. After that she'll get to go out while our dogs do agility, and after that, while another dog jogs past, moving it up to the strange dog doing agility.
While I'm building up to the final result, I will work more on keeping her attention on me for longer, and up my requirements. Psyche's taking a break from agility for the next 3 or 4 weeks, so I'll have more time while at the barn to be there with her -- when I wasn't there to treat her for behaving, mom was. She was constantly rewarded for behaving, and I even let her out to do a couple of tunnels - which she loves - while the other dogs were out.
I'm pleased with today's success. No videos, sorry, because she was just in her crate, really.
So I packed her crate today, and a blanket too. Took lots of treats and prepared to basically spend the whole 2 hours there beside her crate with her. I covered all 4 sides of her crate, except for one corner, where I was sitting - this corner was facing away from any of the other dogs, into a wall. From there I just treated for looking at me, offering eye contact, downing and sitting (in her crate) and behaving. All went well.
When she was doing well like that, I took one side off of the crate so she could see out, asked the same thing, and then eventually a half of the side closest to the dogs working. Any time she barked or whined, the cover went back down.
This worked well, and I felt like I was able to better control how close she was getting to her threshold. We're going to keep doing this, hopefully, until she can sit in her crate with no covers on it at all. After that she'll get to go out while our dogs do agility, and after that, while another dog jogs past, moving it up to the strange dog doing agility.
While I'm building up to the final result, I will work more on keeping her attention on me for longer, and up my requirements. Psyche's taking a break from agility for the next 3 or 4 weeks, so I'll have more time while at the barn to be there with her -- when I wasn't there to treat her for behaving, mom was. She was constantly rewarded for behaving, and I even let her out to do a couple of tunnels - which she loves - while the other dogs were out.
I'm pleased with today's success. No videos, sorry, because she was just in her crate, really.