session 02

Tonight's training was tough. talk about distractions. We have a lot of work ahead of us. marley was very distracted today. But he is still highly motivated by food.

Suzanne had me working on signal only commands. He's pretty spot on with audio only but with visuals only? I switched the visual command for sit at the lesson. I was using a palm up with my hand next to my body. Suzanne was using just a palm up. this way she could do the palm up signal right in front of his face. the way i was doing it he had to be looking at me in order to see the command.

this sounds so easy but basically i had to make him sit, stay... then i walk back a few feet and give him the down command... then come. no audio. she could do it but i couldn't. I think it had to do with the fact that she had food and i don't think i was utilizing the food well. I was also really tired and it was hard to act cheerful with him. I was also not using any audio... i just can't use audio for the commands... i should have used audio to praise him. i was also doing the down command too fast. mine was more of a quick palm to the ground. she wanted me to make it more smooth and gradual.

then we took a small break. you can't train with dogs for very long durations.

we then went inside the kennel with 2 other dogs. it was good to see marley interact. i think he liked playing with the smaller of the 2 dogs. he even started to mount him... heh. but that is a no no. he wasn't scared either. it was really good socialization. he's curious and will sniff the nose but when a dog goes to sniff his butt he then becomes scared. he wasn't scared at all.

the exercise we did was to put all 3 dogs in a down stay... then we have call a specific dog to us... the other 2 have to stay put. So marley is learning that "marley come" is when he goes. he has to recognize his name. this was very tough. lots of distractions. I was pretty worn out myself. the last thing we did was to make him go up on a small ramp. we would then repeat the exercise. he had to be lured up the ramp and when i called him he hesistated. eventually he will have to jump over stuff to come to me.

my homework for this week is to master the visual commands. I also need to teach him the "look" command. i find this tough because when there are no distractions he's looking at me already. On saturday we get to go on an excursion!