Gali north, east and west

This weekend I did a whole mix of things. I cleaned the house, did the laundry, took Aydon clothes shopping (always interesting), went to a Guelph Storm hockey game (also with Aydon), puppy tested Susie Bell's 6 week old lab puppies, watched the leaf game (sigh), finished my bookkeeping for last year (I am now ready to file!!!), started bookkeeping for this year, all four of us went out for a really nice dinner (I even had dessert) and ....I trained my dogs three days in a row ( happy dance!!).

I have been obsessing over Gali's go out problems, so I spent some time figuring out my plan of attack. I looked through my book and lo and behold I found something that I had forgotten all about. When Megan was having problems going out over the jumps instead of between them, I set up a chute of broad jump board from the inside standard of each jump gradually narrowing to the location where she was to touch the barrier and sit (or just sit depending on what I asked her to do). It worked really well because it was difficult for her to make a mistake and this was always the best way to teach her anything because she simply hated to be wrong. I decided to give this a try. I set up two lines of broad jump boards on their ends about 2 feet apart gradually getting wider and wider apart. I spend two sessions just sending Gali through the chute to the wall. I kept him away from the visible metal supports that are every 16 feet in my training building. Then I added the jumps and organized the chutes so that the inside standards of both the jumps became the entrance to the chute. He did really, really well. Rewards were high (meatballs), chase and tug o war sessions. I randomly asked Gali to touch, then sit or sit without touching or sit/touch/sit. It all went very well. The third time I attempted this drill I changed the direction of the go-out, going west instead of north (which is our normal direction). After one set of work I added the directed jumping back into the picture. Gali had to make some adjustments to find a path between the broad jump boards to find a way to the high jump. The first time I asked him to do the bar jump he hopped over one of the boards and then cut in without jumping the bar. I was so happy that this mistake FINALLY happened in training. I said,"HEY" ,which is my catch-all phrase that means "Not what I wanted." I took him back to the bar jump, signalled and asked him to jump it again which he did. I repeated the whole skill again and he did it perfectly. Today I changed it again, the go out direction was east this time and to a line of baby gates. I even paired moving stand before the set up for go-outs to help him recognize that sequence. He was flawless, once he stepped off his line, I think he was going to jump but quickly switched back and continued on his merry way. So good for him for thinking his way through it!! Such a smart boy!!!

The next steps are to change the direction again, reduce the visibility of the chute boards and take it on the road, good thing spring is almost here.

Tomorrow tales of training Ribbon