Last Wednesday I had a 30 minute lesson with Denise Fenzi, a competion obedience trainer who uses positive methods (a rarity in this sport). We've had a couple of lessons with her before, but nowadays most of my training budget goes to our ongoing agility lessons, so it's been a few months since I last saw her.
As usual we started with heeling, since it's so important in competition. Denise liked his turns (both left and right) and his halts. He over-rotated on the left turns, but that's because he was putting in too much effort, and that's a better problem to have than not enough effort. For the first couple of minutes I didn't use any treats or toys to reward him, I just stopped and wrestled with him -- that's a big improvement in our training since Denise last saw us. His attention was drifting a fair amount, since he wanted to sniff and explore. I blabbed at him too much. I do that when I'm nervous. She had me do some large circles to the right so that I could concentrate on my rhythm and connection to him without worrying about footwork. She cued me to alternate praise, silence, and rewards. He doesn't need me to talk to him as much as I do when I'm nervous. Instead he needs me to praise him for making an effort to focus on the work.
We talked about working around distractions or in new environments. Denise noticed that I would call him back to me when he ran off and resume work. She commented that it seemed he had no idea that running off was "wrong". She suggested I use a clear no reward marker to communicate that he shouldn't run off to greet the neighbors or check out a smell. If I have to use it more than a handful of times, then it's not effective and I need to try a different tactic. I don't use NRMs often but I think she's right that this would be the right situation for it.
I had his crate set up and I would cue him to go in when we would stop to talk. If I didn't, he would immediately wander off to explore. He needs a clear structure of "down time in crate" versus "engaged work time". No grey area in which I expect him to just hang out with me while I pet him.
We practiced fronts and the recall next. Last time I saw her, we were just laying a foundation for fronts, using my hands to guide him to sit straight and then tossing a treat between my legs for him to chase. After that we went through a phase in which he would put his front paws on my feet and/or sit pretty. I fixed this by feeding him low to keep his body lowered toward the ground, and I didn't reward the times that he put his feet on my feet. We also spent a lot of time with me pivoting in place and rewarding him for adjusting to be straight again. His fronts are looking much better in terms of the angle. Oddly, he kept standing up from the sit every time I rewarded him at Denise's, something he never does at home. It must have been because he was nervous and/or I was moving a bit differently out of nerves. Denise suggested I feed him from up high again, as it looked to her like I was cuing a stand. Also if he stood up, I would pull the treat away, and he caught on quickly to that part.
We moved on to the dumbbell. Dragon had been doing very well with this, however shortly before our lesson he had dropped the dumbbell onto the wooden floor at my parents' house, and the sound traumatized him. He associated it with coming close to me and my reaching my hand to take the dumbbell from him. The result was that during our lesson he would pick it up when I tossed it, but he didn't want to bring it in close, and he refused to take it into his mouth when I held it out for him. Denise was coaching me to hold my hands close to my body to encourage him to come in, rather than reaching my hands toward him, but each time he felt the dumbbell's weight shift as I took it he would jump back with a scared look. This was very disappointing to me. I had known that he hated the noise and motion of dropping things, but thus far I'd managed to avoid that happening with the dumbbell by carefully reaching and taking it from him. Despite all the time we'd already spent on the dumbbell, the one time he dropped it on a wooden floor outweighed the positive history.
Denise tried to help him work through his fear by kneeling down and placing the dumbbell close to her body and giving him lots of happy talk and encouragement to lean in and pick it up. He was extremely conflicted. He circled her, darting his head forward and back, he rubbed against my legs and climbed on me for support, and a few times he did mouth the dumbbell but did not pick it up fully. We gave up with that exercise.
The last exercise we did was the stand for exam, which went better than expected. I'd been practicing here and there with my coworkers, but mostly we focused on the "person approaching while dog holds a stay" rather than the actual exam. We did just a few reps with Denise approaching and then she was able to give him a light pat down while he held his stand-stay. Good dog! She recommended that I work on this by myself as well. We want him to be focusing his attention on something else besides the person touching him. Usually that "something else" is me standing just a little distance away. If I'm by myself, I can set a treat on the ground for him to focus on while I play judge.
The next lesson will be in a few weeks. I'm about to also post a follow-up of how our next handful of training sessions at home went.
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