Moving On or should I say Off

So to follow on from my last post.... last night Rupert and I trained in the paddock, there were quite a few distractions but he remained committed the whole time and really felt like we had made some great progress, I now have lovely committed forward heelwork!! Hoooraaayyy, He really seems to be getting a buzz out of it to which really suprises me, who would have thought he could get excited about heelwork? so I'm guessing my aim to keep the pressure off is working a treat. Now on to my next problem! Keeping Rupert motivated and happy in his work is easy, especially if I have a treat in my left hand, but as soon as I ask for the postion without a treat he plays ignorance, looks away really anything other than getting into postion - I could at this stage have a word in his ear just to remind him he is supposed to do it because I've asked him, not just becase he can smell the treat! but I have decided for now to backtrack and retrain him in a slightly different way, so today I have started to stand with my hand flat against my hip request the "Close" postion and click when he offers it throwing the treat forward with my other hand - I'm sure to some of you this would have been an obvious way to start with, but Rupert is my first mainly clicker trained dog so I am still using a mixture of my old motivational style techniques together with the clicker which I am only now seeing some flaws with, I may have got away with it with another dog, but Rupert and I are learning together what works for us as a team. So this morning after only 3 or 4 attempts he was eagerly offering the position while the treat was in the other hand, I am hoping to progress this over the next few sessions with the aim having the treats in the pot on the table rather than actually carrying them at all, once I have reached this stage he can have a week off and enjoy a bit more agility training.

Stuck on Statics

So after a few weeks off I have now re-started Ruperts obedience training, he really has got the hang of "Walk Back" but always only offers the very shortest of backward movement the first time just to check how much work he needs to do to get the click! Is that a boy thing? I don't know, but as soon as he realises he needs to put in a bit more effort the clicks start coming thick and fast. I wanted to improve on his commitment to my leg so I have been concentrating on statics, forward one step, two side steps clicking for his attempt to re-join my leg, this has really worked well, however I now find myself "Stuck on statics" I have always been hopeless at forward movement in heelwork, all of my dogs have a fantastic understanding of the position in all directions but forward!! not a lot of use in the obedience ring. so today I made a concerted effort to motivate the first few steps, I started off in the usual still position but had my right leg forward and wound Rupert up like I do in recalls and stays "Ready Steady close" and swiftly walked forward clicking his attempts to keep up, I'm doing this all off lead as the temptation to use the lead to bring him forward as in the old style motivational!! method might be too much and I really want him to believe all of this training is fun, fun, fun, it does seem to be working but his trained heelwork position is on my leg not in front wrapped around like Dylan and Maisy's are, so it sometimes feels like he's lagging when he isn't so I have asked Amy to spare me 20 minutes one evening this week to cast her eye over us. I'll try to get her to take a short video too and then all I'll have to do is work out how to ulpoad it onto here!

More Brain Training

I can't believe nearly a whole month has gone by since my last post! - Rupert is now 6 1/2 months old and he has had a break from his daily obedience training routine in favour of some outdoor activities, I have taught him to stop on the contact points on the agility equipment, the dog walk is only on the very lowest height and he is only doing the A frame by marking the point from the bottom, it's all been very easy to do using the clicker, and he has really suprised me with how solid the action has become in such a short space of time. Last night I wanted to try something esle so I decided to get 2 weave poles out set about 30" appart and was shaping him to run through them from different angles, it was a slow start as I had the clicker and the treat but wanted him to run away from me, with a little showing he was soon racing through them and running on to a treat I had thrown out for him. I'm in no rush to have him weaving and won't really start until he is 14 months old but if he has an idea of whats to come it should only make it easier when the time finally arrives.
Obedience wise I have laid off the heelwork training for a few weeks, he has plenty of time to perfect it, so this week I have started with "Walk Back" funnily enough when Amy did this with Summer she just seemed to know the command and would happily trot backwards at any given opportunity! Rupert was a little slower to begin with and by the end of the first go, and we are only talking about 2 minutes at a time, he was shuffling his bottom from one sit backwards into another sit! so he was beginning to get the idea that his bottom had to move in order to get the click. Then Amy was helping me and said just to keep quiet and wait a bit longer to see what he did, after a couple of false starts where I was a bit clicker happy he was soon working out that the faster and futher he went backwards the quicker he got the click - clever boy.. it's great to have a training partner who can sometimes point out the obvious to you. I have also found that his downs have also become much quicker as these were quite frankly a little lazy to say the least.
Amy and I are off to the KC Agility Festival followed by a week long Agility show in August all the dogs will be camoing with us but as we now have a new caravan none of them will be allowed inside! poor things - Rupert is very much an outdoors dog, always choosing to sleep on the patio rather than the carpet so he will be quite happy but we might pine for some of his special Rupert cuddles after a long days agility!!