Received shipment of Clean Run toys. Nice rabbit tug with two handles, thought Joon might like it.

Anyway, our big session today consisted of working her on leash using handfuls of Red Barn applied as appropriate for desired behaviors. Clicker too, just for the heck of it. She was AMAZING.

Leaving her to wander and explore is obviously a loser at this time. Far more rewarding than she finds me – for now. But with the leash and frequent clicks and treats for the least good behavior, she was really ON. She finally realized I like her to get on the teeter (which is flat on the ground) and stay on the board. She received an entire lunch on that thing!

We had just taught an intro agility class, so there were two short tunnels available to us, and she willingly rushed in and out of both of them on cue. She’s been less than 100% on curved tunnels, and I haven’t pushed because I really need two people to work that – or lots of good experience with straight moving to curved tunnels. So this is good progress too.

Did many sits. Had her do two hand touches. First time. (C&T) Tomorrow there will be more. I hate to push hand touches first time, because many dogs offer them willingly (curiosity) and then quit since they apparently don’t make the connection between touching the hand, getting clicked and receiving a treat from the other hand. I think it’s just too much to ask for more immediately. So I’m going to see if we can get more tomorrow. Latent learning? Or just a dog who’s learning what works? What do I care? For now, what works, but it sure would be good to keep records on what really does work for most dogs.

She absolutely adored her new tug toy. No leash with this activity. She did not visit the barrel that contains her monkey on a lunge whip (which is a bear to manage) and the other tug toy we’ve been playing with – which is somewhat fragile and therefore not a great plaything. I flopped the thing on the ground, dragged it about a bit, and she fell for it. Great, serious tugging, so committed that I felt safe to ask her to “out” with my hand on her collar and a slack toy. She “outed” immediately, and was rewarded immediately – with the toy. When I allowed her to take the toy off on her own, it took me a bit to get it back, had to wait for her to leave the toy on some other pursuit of her own. She plays a cute game with that — pretends to leave, and if I so much as look at the toy she grabs it — so leaving her toy isn’t really losing attention most of the time. Sometimes I’m pretty quick – or she’s allowing me to get in there and get it because it’s part of her game – and I don’t care, as long as her game aligns with my game – the goal being that our games coincide. My goal is to get her totally hooked on playing with her tug toy with me.

Unfortunately (or not), the Staples truck arrived with a shipment of stuff I bought online on “Black Friday” and I had to cut our session short. Probably not a bad thing, since it was all good. Later all the dogs got bones (her first bones here, and oboy was she happy). Life is good.

Tomorrow we go to a fellow dog trainer’s place to work/play with our dogs. I’m looking forward to feedback from others with this girl. I’m also interested to see if she’ll be able to focus on her new wonderful toy and major Red Barn and other treats in a brand new situation.