I think it's time for us in the Pacific NW to gather all the animals 2 by 2 and start hammering the gopher wood together. Holy cow, it's rainin'! We're used to showers, but this is rain. What's the difference, you ask? Only a true Pacific Northwesterner will be able to tel you. Showers are intermitent; rain is steady. And it's been steady all day today. Poor Frankie...all excited to go outside, then she walks out on the porch and looks at me and laughs, "You think I'm actually going out in that?"
At least the venison and brown rice allergy formula food is a winner. She gobbled that down for dinner like nobody's business. We had two short training sessions today. I used the canned chicken with both. I think we're safe with that since chicken is the only ingredient. We worked on sit, down, gimme five, stick'em up (which I've now decided to call 'freeze'...good thing I haven't put a cue to this yet!), and wave. We worked upstairs this time on the landing. I alternated standing and sitting on the top step of the stairs.
In our evening session we started targeting the end of a small dowel. This was one of the first things I taught her before we decided to 'start over' on our training. She did very well and enthusiastically targeted the stick every time. I'm going to move the stick so she'll start to follow it in our next session. She was very 'in the moment' in this session and offered most of the behaviors readily. I think I need to start keeping a chart so I can see for sure where we are. Oh, we also started to shape the beginnings of a 'take it' behavior. Once she caught on she was able to bump her mouth on a tube shaped toy I got for her.
That's all for now!
Ellen & Frankie
