On the adventures and training of Cinnamon Snapdragon, a papillon destined for greatness.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Focus and Motivation agility class, week 3

We worked on restrained recalls, restrained recall through a tunnel, circle work, nose targets, and sending the dog forward to a toy.

Dragon won't play with toys right now. I had to go through the whole explanation of, "No, he does have toy drive, and I know how to build toy drive, he just won't play right now because of his eye injury" with both the instructor and the assistant. But I was really happy with the instructor's response of, "Well the border collie people all think that your dog has to tug, but my previous dog never tugged a day in her life. I just used toys with food inside to get her to drive ahead toward something." So I'm turning one of Dragon's old torn-up plush toys into a food pouch that I can toss ahead. That should be good for building drive to run ahead because the prednisone makes him SUPER HUNGRY. Still, I want my playful, tuggy dog back!!

He was much better about staying on his mat during downtime, and a bit more focused as we walked around the yard between exercises. I don't allow him to do his own thing on the field. He's either doing an exercise, walking next to me with attention instead of sniffing at the end of the leash, or he's resting and free to look around while in my arms or on his mat. We also practiced a bit of obedience heeling and I brought his dumbbell and liver treats to practice after class.

During most of the time that the instructor is talking to the class, it's super basic stuff and I'm a little bored, but occassionally I'll notice a hole in our foundation. I need to work more on Dragon driving to his nose target independent of my movement, and especially while I keep running ahead. While we don't get many reps in front of the instructor (we only did two recalls and two runs through the tunnel), the biggest upside of doing a group class is that she sees us week after week, and so we're getting steady advice throughout the training process. When I was doing privates with Moe, it was nice to have her undivided attention, but I can end up training the wrong thing or leaving big holes when I'm left to train mostly on my own.

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