Today I worked with Bindi on her turning off a light switch. It is part of her 10 part behavior chain. She did well. Trying to correct her positioning, she sits to the side of our little mock up of a light switch (she is too short to reach one on the wall), so worked on treat placement and positioning. She wanted to do more so we worked on some of her other behaviors for her chain. Next week we will begin to put a couple together, and then after that work backward and work mini chains.
In the evening I worked with Cody and Terra. Terra I worked on shaping her to stay inside a rope circle without giving the stay cue. She did well. She loved it! SHe is quite a character. cody I did some review behaviors with him. Tried to shape him into a down without a cue or force. He already knows a down but we used targeting and I didn't give him a cue. He did really well, then before it got dark, and since it was only around 90 we went out in the back and ran around for about a couple of laps. They loved it!

How is everyone else doing? haven't seen many posts on what we are working on daily, did we end that topic?
love sharon

well we have been slacking off thanks to mother nature and work.
We had a lot of rain and now just had 2 weeks of over 35oC.

Dexter is happy to sleep in the shade and getting him in the mood for any sort of activity was hard.

Harley was slower then normal. We did some nosework and lots of position change, stuff we can do inside. Agility is just not happening. Hopefully things will be a bit less crazy after the show season.

I finally been able to bushhog the back field so tracking will be possible. The grass was out of control.

Today was way cooler not to say colder so we went for a nice long walk in town. Played, did some ob, chilled and had FUN with the dogs.

Not much plan for this week as both my employees are away! I am on my own, not fun. And one new horse is coming in for a month of full training in 2 weeks.

Sam has been opening up more and more with people and dogs. We've been slowly teaching him to view strangers and strange dogs as a distraction and that's been helping a lot with taking him out in public. We've been introducing him to friends and dogs we know well and last week spent time with our favorite Bernese Mountain Dog breeder and her dogs, all well socialized and used to puppies. He did great and it was a really good experience for him as well as fun for us.

We've been working on nuisance barking now that the nipping is well under control. (YAY for no scratched up arms!!!) He's teething now and barks for attention, but we're treating it similar to the nipping with timeouts when he starts and treats and attention for the times he stays quiet in his crate or ex-pen. We've also been training him to handle grooming better, including dremeling his claws.

We spent a lot of time this weekend hiding treats in the yard and having him "search" for them, which is one of his favorite games now.

Tonight is my first practice with the only Schutzhund club in town that is still accepting new members. Sam will be staying home, but I will be bringing cookies in the hopes of tipping the scales.

This morning we worked on heeling on the right, sits and downs in motion with a stay and recall to my side back to heeling position in motion - last part didn't go very well as he tended to overshoot my position gleefully and with vigour.

I also incorporated a new hand gesture with an existing verbal command to get him to approach then sit close on my right in heel position, which he got the very first time. Position wasn't perfect but I was very proud

Work has cut into our club and tracking time lately. We have also been doing more prey and grip development for homework, now that Sadie has taken an interest in bitework, so that has cut into our OB training, as well. We have been polishing up some OB behaviors and revisiting some older exercises at home with our remaining time, but haven't generalized anything for a while.

That being the case, I opted to use our OB time at the club last night to proof some behaviors and desensitizing that we have been working on all along. Sadie was spot on, with good focus in the fuss. She ignored all of the distractions, even when heeling within just a few feet of another dog. Two years ago, I couldn't get anywhere close to another dog. Last night, I heeled her into a group of people and dogs and downed her four feet from another dog, and she was a perfect lady, even as the other dog was allowed to posture and give her the stink eye. She did try to make a move when the other owner allowed her dog to get too close, but I caught it right off and moved away, deciding to call an end to a very successful session.

Sadie's bitework was improved significantly since our last bitework session. All in all, the night left me with pause to reflect on how far she's come in two years.

Duane - I've been reading through your thread about how you started with Sadie and reading about your progress...you definitely have reason to reflect and be proud!

I finished the Michael Ellis tug video and immediately ordered his video on focused heeling. I find myself wishing I could go back and watch all these before my puppy came home! At least I'm catching up now.

We're working on engagement, stepping back a few steps and working just on getting better eye contact. I'm walking him all over the place and, instead of asking for sits or downs and treating for those, I'm treating him for giving me eye contact without any request from me. He's catching on quick and I'm finding that it's improving his engagement other times when I do ask for something. My husband has been working on getting him to settle in a down next to him while he's working (my husband, not the dog!) for longer periods and can now get him to do it off leash.

Tomorrow we have our first tracking practice and I'm really excited. I'm mainly hoping to work on engagement in this new setting with new people and dogs around him. I'm not expecting much from him for now, except to become more comfortable with the setting and to start to build the idea in him that when we go to practices...there is going to be fun and play and treats!

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Last night was a little bit of focused heeling in the house, also working on recht - right hand sit in heel position. I need to work on my luring for this to bring him into better position. This morning was tricks in the kitchen (narrow galley kitchen keeps him close for positioning) spin - still heavily depending on the lure but getting close to being able to do it empty handed and kriech - crawl - trying to figure how best to get him to understand I want his elbows to stay on the floor for this as he scrambles a good bit. I think I need to shorten the distance he tries to travel while still keeping the lure more out of reach.

When teaching "crawl" was I make sure to start with a good lying down position.

This is pretty good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4qLMRqICeA

Highlights of the weekend: Duke carried one of Charlie's balls into the kitchen. I looked at him and said.. Silly Duke, that's not yours! Get your toy. He dropped the ball and picked up his bottle buddy chew toy. (Ball is still where he left it 2 days later, which says something about him AND about me)

Sunday afternoon family walk culminated with me carrying a baby in a sling, a dog on a leash and a toddler's tricycle over my shoulder because he didn't want to ride it anymore and wanted to walk home - as we rounded the corner of our cul-de-sac, Dan was standing in the front yard with a bite wedge as he does occasionally when we're on a walk, so Duke has something fun to look forward to on the way back. Much less fun when I was playing pack mule, he really wanted to go for that RIGHT NOW. A minute and a half later, after he finally listened and realized that platz does NOT mean sitz no matter how badly he wanted it to, he got to have a nice long dash to the front yard and a good bite on the wedge, and was happy to carry it inside.

Recht is coming along nicely - he's starting to tuck in against my leg and understand when he's not quite far enough forward. Spin was very successful this morning with no treat in hand, just the motion. Kreich was baby steps. I think I need to use something less wonderful for kreich, like maybe pieces of apple.

We have also found something the dog WON'T EAT. Raw shrimp. He did try to roll in it though.

@Kristin - How long did it take for the shrimp smell to dissipate? I let my dog have frozen raw halibut scraps once and he smelled fishy for quite a while. Happy...but fishy!

We had a great weekend. Tracking practice was a blast and then yesterday we did another puppy track for fun and then worked on obedience. We did a game with 2 tugs to work on possession, but little to no tug due to teething. Even so, he left some blood on the tugs. He seemed not fazed at all by it, though! This morning, on our walk, we worked more on engagement. I'm trying to take longer to treat for eye contact and make him hold it at least 2 seconds now before giving a treat. We also did a little bit of muscle memory work for heeling with luring while walking along a fence. Pretty good results for a first try, although he was a little too motivated for the treat!

Tonight we have obedience and protection practice with the ScH club. I'm not sure I will even bring him out for protection since he doesn't seem to be ready to tug with his teething. The most I might do is letting him watch and work on engagement during it. I do plan on working on basic obedience and engagement quite a bit, though, as well as watching and learning.