Colt is now 16 months old and will turn 17 months just before we get back from New Zealand. He’s been measured at 51cm at withers (20.5 inches) so is well into the middle of the 500 class. He can go over jumps (note to self – work on collection and turns), do tunnels, take broad jumps and the tyre. His jumping style is still very much in the figuring out what he can do with his body stage so can be all over the place however the signs are that he will be a pretty athletic jumper once he gets his head around it. We’re working on that. In the past 3 days I’ve decided to put weavers on the agenda. He’s been doing a 2×2 weaver base (one) just to work entries. That’s not a finished behaviour yet…still a WIP. I decided it would be a WIP for a while so three days ago I got my stick in the ground poles out and stuck them in the new back yard lawn in a straight line but the poles slanted.
Colt and his weaves – he’s getting it done.
I have slightly lured and then mostly shaped his understanding of the poles. After two five minute sessions (or however long it took for us to get through a hotdog frankfurt) he was totally offering the behaviour himself. He’s still figuring out his speed – he makes errors when he tries running at them understandably as this is a brand new, fairly complex physical behaviour, but I’m pleased with his accuracy rates. We never make more than a couple errors in a row. Of course we’re off on holiday to NZ on Saturday so I gave my sister a quick crash course in reward placement and clicker training – hopefully if he even gets a few sessions in a week with her they’ll be straight pretty soon and up to 6. I have video taken on my phone. Sadly in such HD it’s a massive file so I need to advance my tech understanding once more to figure out if I can compress it smaller on my phone to upload. And yes people have recommended the 2×2 weaver method as the one to go with. I’ve looked at it and totally see the value of it (and have used it before with Savvy) but to be honest I have two character flaws that really don’t gel with it – impatience and laziness. I just cannot be arsed to do all those steps. I may use bits and pieces of the method later on but for now I just want to get the behaviour understood and learnt.
He’s still grasping the concept of the “wait” command.
However show him from his best side and he understands the “wait” quite well.
Contacts? Oy vey contacts. We may just stick to jumping for a while 🙂 No excuses. If I wanted to train it I would train it plain and simple. I did get the plank out for the first time the other day. We have done quite a few sessions of Dawn Weaver’s box work with the mat in the box and running into it and stopping with the two front paws out. Because he is not as drivey to toys I struggled with the facing forwards stage. He sends very nicely to it but will always look to me at the side or behind and he doesn’t drive to a toy laying still on the ground too well yet. I have a plan to fix that separately. I have been very leery of pushing him too fast. Colt is quite a soft temperament to train and I have been very careful to ensure he experiences success most of the time and that he’s happy to play tug with me. He’s always played tug but he certainly could do with some more persistence there. One of the things that makes him such a lovely dog to live with – not an aggressive bone in his body, very cuddly, very easy going and laid back, nothing much phasing him also passes through to his drive to tug. If I pull too hard he figures I must want it more than he does and he lets go, he’s polite like that – I’d like him to redirect his persistence and determination to dig holes when unsupervised into persistence and determination to win at tugging 🙂 I think he thinks Cypher is quite embarrassingly coarse and uncouth the way he carries on about tugging. He sits back and gives this faintly disapproving look as if to say “Nice dogs don’t play tug like that.” It never fails to surprise me just how vastly different in personalities these four furkids are. Each with their own strengths and appealing to live with characteristics but all so very individual with it.
All my next posts will be from New Zealand! Today we fly there arriving early Sunday morning in Christchurch for an action packed self drive holiday. A completely non-dog and non-Supernaturally related! However I am sure those things will pop up anyway. The furkids will all stay home as my sister will be taking over dog sitting duties for the next three weeks.
sherunswithdogs 