Here is the video of Kain and I, we started marker training on Nov. 11th, so this is day 19.

Week 3 marker training


As I was training him, I thought he was a tad slower than usual. I finished the training session anyway, since he did look like he was up for it.

When I was watching the video, I realized that he was probably still feeling nauseated from his ride home. We just home from the park 30-40 minutes ago. He has motion sickness, although it has gotten better over the last 2-3 weeks, I don't think riding in our van is his favorite activity. Poor Kain, I should've been more observant!

We've spent the last week focusing on staying on the touch pad, learning the verbal "touch" command, pivoting, and introduction of verbal "stand" command. I've backed off from teaching the "sit stay." I think he is getting a little confused between the sit, platz, and stand. I've been intermittently adding hand gestures to help him along. I will add duration when he is able to comfortably differentiate these commands.

I do have a problem though. I actually forgot how I taught my GSD to pivot, forgive me, but it has been two years since I taught her how to pivot on a touch pad.

Kain will pivot to my left (with his shoulder against my leg) without any problem (since I just nudge him along with my leg). How do I teach him how to pivot to my right? He will now do it, but I have to be facing him.

How do I teach him how to follow my leg to pivot to the right? Do I need to teach him how to heel first?

Melissa,
I noticed that last week you started with exercises that allowed for rapid reps and therefore rapid rewards. I wonder if starting the session with these would initiate more focus from Kain. In your week 3 training video Kain gets much more interested in the session as it goes along...but the reps towards the end require less time to complete...and rewards are coming more often!

As to your question:
"How do I teach him how to follow my leg to pivot to the right? Do I need to teach him how to heel first?"
I just happened to be looking at ME's Focused Heeling video yesterday which had a great section on exactly your question..It was almost the last segment in the video.

Thank you for posting the video it is great to watch and learn from!

Mellisa>> Excellent work. Your marker skills are awesome and have improved if I may say so. Kaine looks beautiful.

Just one observation, is the slippery floor causing some hesitancy in Kaine? He is constantly slipping while sitting. May be you can try him out on a rough surface and see if there is any difference.

Lisabet, yes, I agree. I am going to start the session with more rapid reps/treats to keep Kain's drive up. I know the pivot part was taking at lot of his brain power, and I should reward him more often for it. It was actually hard for me because I was trying to make sure I didn't step on his leash or accidentally bump him off the touch pad.

I don't have the Heel DVD, but I do recall ME going over the pivoting on touch pad, I think he showed us how to manipulate the dog's head/body with treats. I am going to try that out first, if it doesn't work, I am going to dig through my videos from my ME class, just that I have almost 9 days worth of videos and I could not remember what day it was on,

Ram, thank you so much for your encouraging words! The videos are really helping me learn. Can you tell that I have been trying to use my left hand more? Haha, it's hard though, I have to constantly remind myself

Great observation as well, Kain is having problems with our floor. Unfortunately, there is no carpet in our house, I thought about training him outside, but our backyard is landscaped so it has no room for training. I may try to do some engagement work with him in the driveway and see how he does. I just want to at least finish the basic commands in a low or no distraction area first.

He is such a pretty boy! I adore black shepherds. You look like you are having so much fun with him. I've asked for ME's food DVD for Christmas. Yay! I want to have fun like that too. Thanks for posting.