Article game outside--Millie had a great time! I started to get the hang of the timing, although I am still having a hard time avoiding eye contact. The last one was almost perfect!
Ok. I must be seeing things. She is downing on an article. By choice. Happily. FANTASTIC!!! My favorite rep was the one where you tossed a treat away, she chased & ate it, and then trotted right over to the article and downed. Let’s repeat this tomorrow before we make any changed. This is awesome, simply awesome.
Millie 11/21 Obstacles Goal--to give Millie experience working TDX-like obstacles on a young track, including crossing asphalt road and handling transition from one type of cover to another (in this case back and forth between groomed field and roughly bushhogged brush). Five turns, 364 yards, 2 intermediate articles. Aged 45 minutes. Cover groomed grass, medium field grass, rough-cut brush. Several very new accidental cross-tracks Cover slightly damp. Mostly cloudy, 63°, light breeze, rh 83%. Good start, stuck nicely to first leg (although here and elsewhere she frequently stops and looks to side searching for the food drops that she knows must be there). Clear loss of scent at corner, but had to work a bit to find the line. Finally started in the right direction, although we had to stop to bark at a cross-country runner. My mistake in getting momentarily confused by the wrong line-up, but when she got the the road Millie corrected my mistake and crossed at exactly the right plac...
Two new article tracks, one from Thursday and one from today. 3/20. Slightly sketchy start, but stuck to the track nicely throughout the session. Did have to work a bit at the one corner, but found the correct direction. As an article track, we have a long way to go--she did find each and every article, but only twice, later in the track, did she give me a good automatic down. Her mind was clearly on getting at the food in the article. My timing is still off as well--it's more like two or three seconds between her starting to nose the article an me saying "Down". 3/25 (starts around 10:13). ≅300 yards, 1 turn. Good start and work on the track all the way through, although once or twice she had some difficulty recognizing the article when it was among debris or in the only long grass on the track. This time I had one piece of food in each article: if she gave me a down only after the command and gesture, she only got the one piece of food. If she gave me an automatic dow...
Millie -- Obstacles Practice AM, Article Game PM Two different sessions with Millie today, since the weather was beautiful. Morning--5-turn (4 open, 1 90°), 275 yard track with changes of cover and two road crossings. Sunny, 56°, calm. Low humidity. Food drops every 30 yards or so, and high-value food drops after negotiating challenges. The start and most of the first leg were mediocre--I thought that distractibility was going to be a problem all along today--she was sniffing hard at everything but the track, and she seemed to lose it for a bit after the transition from medium to short grass. But she made the first turn ok, and about a quarter of the way down the second leg she started working the track nicely. She had to work a bit on the first road crossing, but made got to the far side about 2 feet wide left. She made a nice transition from medium grass to the rough stuff with no hesitation, and negotiated the second turn and the long third leg through the brush w...
Ok. I must be seeing things. She is downing on an article. By choice. Happily. FANTASTIC!!! My favorite rep was the one where you tossed a treat away, she chased & ate it, and then trotted right over to the article and downed. Let’s repeat this tomorrow before we make any changed. This is awesome, simply awesome.
ReplyDelete💙 she adores you Ralph and she is so dang happy to be playing games alone with you. Congratulations.
ReplyDelete