I like to work with Eden bright and early in the morning. She's excited and enthusiastic to work and it results in some flashy behavior and also prompts her to more easily offer behavior. Both things I reward and want.
Today I wanted to work some more on perch training for rear-end awareness. This will be helpful for agility, flyball and heel work in obedience. The last lesson she was lured onto and marked/rewarded for putting her feet on. I only did this a handful of times with her, and again, only with the lure. I want her to be able to get on it from any distance and then to be able to pivot and swing either direction - either around me standing stationary or along with me in Front position. Right now, I am only asking her to get on it with a verbal command and slowly increasing the distance that I send her to it.
We also worked on touching a target with her nose, which will be the method that I use for agility obstacles, particularly the contacts. Eventually, I will want to be able to send her to the target from any distance as well. This is the first time she's ever seen a target so I start out with it in my hand and some light reinforcement for showing interest. Then I put it down with food to make it more exciting and send her to it. The idea is that that touching it with her nose is always good. Later, the food will be phased out and she will need to run to it and touch it with her nose, or perform a behavior (sit or down) based on what I tell her.
We are working on our stays while in drive so I sort of combined the two in this lesson. It is obvious that she is struggling a little to keep her head in the game and her butt planted but I am confident that we will get there. There are several spots in the video where we are moving around and she offers some pretty fantastic eye contact while walking - I can't wait to start teaching her a formal heel, I think she will end up very prancy and flashy! :-)
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