Front yard fun
I had Amika out on the new rig yesterday again. It was the flipped halti harness and the 5m line in the front yard. I also brought along my belt, regular lead and a chopped up raw sausage in with the kibble in the training pouch.
I let her do lots of sniffing around. As my car has been un-drivable all week, she has been bored. I did nothing with her on Friday due to spending most of it in car hunt mode. REALLY bored.
In between sniffing, I just asked for simple stuff and we played LAT with neighbours and passers by. But mostly sniff time, while I read the local paper while standing in the sun. When I was done, I clipped her onto the regular lead (attached under her belly and to my belt). I walked her in the drive for a bit, then the neighbour’s dog got let out on the other corner of our property.
Just as I had done on Thursday when she had been on the line, the chunk of raw sausage got popped into the gob. By the second or third bit, she was reorienting to me for a split second. That is to say, her attention was divided between the other dog and sausage. This is a very good sign.
Fortunately the neighbour dog is a wuss. When it sees Amika in full flight, it avoids the sidewalk in front of our house. In this case it went back into its front yard where it couldn’t be seen. Amika calmed down well. She did react with more excitement when someone went past on a bike because she was hyped (if loose, it would have been the silly greeting thing). She calmed down further as I started using handfulls of kibble to jackpot reorienting. And then Dion came home, zipping into the drive on his scooter for an extremely well behaved greeting. She bounced up a couple of times, but considering she had just calmed from a barking session, it was impressive.
Today there were not so many exciting passers by. People on bikes don’t seem to rate as particularly exciting. She did need to do quite a bit of LAT neighbour. I then did as yesterday and put her on lead and walked her around the drive. We popped out onto the sidewalk and saw more neighbours coming home, so back into the yard. She found that a bit much, as they could have had their dog with them. She got a sausage for reorient.
Then we did more walking in the drive focusing on attention to me. Another random sausage. Then we walked out onto the verge. She got to sniff the trees in front of our house and the other neighbour’s. We did the verge walking a couple of times and she did really well with it. She got random sausages because there wasn’t another dog around to reward her for, but it worked out good for getting her to focus on me.
The evening was rounded off later on with some silliness. I decided to shape her to sit on a chair. She had her thinking cap on and came up with a couple of really cute poses along the way.
So for a boring week, we have had some good training. I should be able to pick up the new car tomorrow, so we’ll be mobile again soon.
