We had another lovely training session this evening; Basil's go-outs continue to improve. Tonight, we only worked on moving the broad jump chute away from the wall. The way we've been training has meant that the broad jump chute is pushed directly up against the wall as a "guide" for Basil to show him where to go bop the wall with a paw. The plan is to move the broad jump chute further and further back, until it's directly in the middle of the "ring" (or room or area) and the dog can be sent from either end. At that point, the chute will disappear and only dowels will lie on the floor as a chute near the wall. Tonight, we got the chute 4 feet from the wall, and I didn't see any confusion at all!
Signals are also going very well, especially since I decided to pattern-train them. We were stuck for so very long on signals because I made the HUGE mistake of attempting to randomize them very early in training. I couldn't make it any farther than five feet away (I refuse to increase distance and difficulty for the dog at the same time, hence being stuck at five feet...for at least three months. Ugh). Once I started pattern-training them, Basil has been spot on; we're now up to about 22-25 feet away! I can leave him in a stand, and the only thing I randomize is which signal I mark and treat. Sometimes we go through the entire pattern of stand/down/sit/recall, and sometimes we do just a down with a loooong pause before he gets marked.
We also worked on gloves again tonight (yesterday was the first time). I taught Basil to hold a glove and a washcloth as a puppy, along with his dumbbell, but it's been a long time since we did anything with cloth. Even though Basil never, ever plays with toys, he seems to think it's fun to flip and fling the glove. Silly boy! So I've been marking holds but only if he holds long enough for me to take the glove from his mouth. If he spits it out, drops it or flings it, no c/t. Because he already knows how to hold a dumbbell, and because he's clicker savvy, it hasn't taken long at all for him to figure this out. At our private lesson last week, L taught me how to toss a glove while incorporating the mark signal into the toss (clever!). I don't know why I've never thought of that myself! But after I got some nice holds tonight, we began with very short (2') tosses, and Basil retrieved them beautifully.
Articles were our only bugaboo this evening, and even then Basil only had one error (he retrieved the wrong article once). Distance really freaks him out, and we've been adding distance to the article pile. Tonight we started at 5 steps (@ 8-10') from the pile, and worked up to 8 steps over several reps. I can tell immediately when he's having difficulty, because he works the pile longer, skips over the correct article because he wants to "double check," and just generally doesn't look as confident. But he got lots of jackpots tonight, and we'll work through this stress together. I'm still keeping it easy: before we added any distance at all to the pile, he was searching a pile of 10-12 articles. Because he needs some help right now (distance criteria change means I make it easier on him at the pile by decreasing the number of articles), I'm only having him search a total of six.
We'll keep plugging along...now that I'm going into my last quarter of school, I should be able to get LOTS of training done...
