It's All Gone Wrong!!!

Today was more contact training for the dogs. I increased the height of the A-Frame which proved to be disastrous! Heidi and Kody both had about a 90% failure rate. Heidi was still trying to do the down in one stride but couldn't and so missed the contact and Kody started to leap off from almost the top. We quickly stopped and took a break and I then lowered it for them again but they still mostly missed so I need to come up with a plan of action for them both.

I had planned to start the dog walk today but due to the A Frame issues it made me re think how I was going to approach it with them both. I decided to try laying the plank on the ground and get them running to the end and off it to their toy. It worked really well with Kody and he had a 100% success so I was really pleased. Heidi had gone into one of her crazy moods which makes her pretty impossible to do anything with and so she was jumping the end about half of the time even with it flat on the floor!

I guess they like to keep me on my toes and thinking!

All was not lost today though, Megan has been a really good girl, no real issues with her A-Frame as I increased the height, she just needs a bit more confidence to know she is doing it right. I have started to mark her contact with a clicker and I think that will help. As her A Frame worked so well I decided to keep to my original plan and train her dog walk in the same way. She soon realised if she jumped the end (which so only actually did about 4 times anyway) there was no click or treat. I do need to adjust where I placed the first stride regulator today though so that we are getting it in 3 strides not 4 as I have a feeling when they are removed she will do it in 3 and miss the end but she seemed to be getting the idea today so it was a good start.

I have also done some wait training with Megan today, I have decided to shape the behaviour I want with a clicker instead of trying to make her do it. We did it outside today but not near any equipment and funnily enough it didn't take long for her to work out what I wanted and we had some great results so i'm going to continue with it now and we will have a wait this year!!!

I have added a video of Megan's training today, hopefully it will work (I have been having some issues with Windows Live Movie Maker for a while as it suddenly wont play .mov files from my video camera so I have decided to try out iMovie on my Mac instead).