Lately I’ve found myself bored and unmotivated. Spending much too much time in front of the TV. The dogs have been getting their near daily morning walk, but they too have been bored by the afternoon. So for the month of December I’m committing myself to what I’m calling “Skill A Day” meaning we practice some kind of training skill or game every day. Whether is agility, obedience, herding, random trick or completely made up game. Something completely new or review of an existing skill. As long as it’s something that gets our brains working and thinking.
Today Zora and I practiced the agility skill of “Go” in context of an X-Hoopers circle as it’s something I’ve noticed she and I have been having communication breakdowns with. Outside of the hoop circle context Zora is rather consistent in her understanding of “go” means run in a straight line without lead changing or turning doing equipment in that straight line path. But in the hoop circle context she was tending to curve instead of run straight to the far hoop in the direct “go” straight line path. In large part because on a hoop circle with the gates, I am more likely to stop my forward motion and get ‘stuck’ behind a gate. I stop, she slows or stops and higher chance she curves off the straight line path. So we practiced.
Practice Set 1:
Practice Set 2:
And Tom and I practiced sit, down, up sit, and nose to hand touch cues as I’ve noticed lately he’s gotten a bit slow and sloppy on responses. Most of the time when I ask him to do these cues in real life, he’s at my side, so we practiced both with him in front facing me and at my left side in working position. Most often when working if I’m stopped, I ask Tom to ‘down’ and his cue to sit from a down is ‘up sit.’ Which yes, we’ve gotten rather lax with, so we practiced.
Was a good training day!
