I remembered back when Basil was having some transitional difficulty with the dumbbell when I was getting him ready for Open; he's terrible at generalizing to new locations, and I had tried moving him outside after working only inside. We were working in the driveway, and he was refusing retrieves even though he loved his dumbbell and loved retrieving. I do remember that it was summer, and hot, which is always bad news for Basil. So I decided to try something new: I took his breakfast outside to work while it was still cool, and treated him from his breakfast bowl of raw food.
I don't feed raw any more--I haven't had time since I went back to school in 2005--but now that I'm graduating in June, I wanted to get the dogs off of processed food again. I started cooking for them last week. Their current meal is ground beef, rice and peas (plus supplements).
This morning, I put Basil's half-cup of food into his bowl and we went out to the driveway with the sole intention of working on signals and just a few articles. I started out at 8 steps and progressed to 10-11 steps. I got one anticipated down, two missed sit signals that needed a verbal, and one down that went slowly...but otherwise, he did great! I didn't see as much stress as I have in the past, and he was very pumped up about working for his tasty breakfast. Basil absolutely hates to be wrong, and it stresses him out so much; I think he senses my frustration with this exercise, which is unfortunate. But I was pretty excited today, and quite pleased with his work. When he missed those two sits, I just verbally cued him, and decided to click and treat him for the second one (the first one I just praised and released). After I c/t'd him for that second sit plus a verbal, he didn't have any more problems with sits.
After we finished signals, we worked on just 4 articles: two metal and then two leather. I have a full pile out now, ten total articles, and we're working at a very close distance of about 7-8 feet. I decided that it was time to work up to a full pile and THEN add distance, rather than adding two articles, moving close, backing up and then starting all over again at the next two articles. He always seems to have difficulty when I put out the first leather article, even when it's at the same distance, maybe because he's looking for that metal article he found before?? I think it might be time to try mixing things up...start with leather rather than always metal, and also start alternating (1 leather, 1 metal, 1 leather, etc.) rather than doing a few of one and then switching. He got big jackpots for his correct retrieves of the articles and then we finished. An excellent session! I might take him to work with me tonight to work on go-outs, gloves and directed jumping.
Teagan's session, which I did immediately after Basil's, was less than stellar. She's having problems with the high jump. Or, rather, I'm having problems teaching her to return over the jump. She's the first dog I've had who hasn't done agility, and she isn't the best jumper. I have the high jump set at two inches because I'm really only working on the concept, not the actual jumping portion. She's fine running out over the jump (mostly), but if the dumbbell has been winged to one side, she returns around, especially if she can see me.
I just got an idea...I might try using ring gating on either side of the jump to help her! If I put a piece on either side, I'll get lots of opportunities to reinforce her return over the jump because she won't have the chance to run around it. And if I see that she's about to run around the gating, I'll have plenty of lag time to interrupt her and redirect her over the jump. Eureka! I'm going to try this later this afternoon.
One other interesting note: her growling has returned with the added difficulty in criteria. Every time I make the retrieve more difficult, she begins growling...on the run-out, the pick-up and especially the return to front. I no longer worry about it, because it fades on its own as she becomes more comfortable. I also remind her very gently to "shhhh" when she's returning, and that helps too.
