Morgan's Training

Well no freestyle training yesterday. I just couldn't fit it in with all my meetings and school visits. However, this morning we had a training date with Jake the Border Collie. Tom is working on his handling skills with Jake and I think I helped with that a little.

Because Morgan was a loose cannon on Tuesday, yesterday I put on her e-collar and let her wear it all day. This morning I spent about 10 minutes training her to come with the e-collar. She kinda got it and then we were off to Tom and Jake's. When it was Morgan's turn, she immediately started looking for the kitten that was in the screened porch on Tuesday. I called her and pushed the e-collar control. She hesitated but soon came to me. We tried it a couple of more times and she was really good.

We started with the training plank which she completely ignored. She couldn't seem to keep four paws on it to begin with. It is hard to teach 2o2o when the damn dog won't even keep 4 on. We have to work on that which means that I need to get out our plank, fix it (the feet are on wrong), paint it and practice. It's a beautiful day today, maybe after I put in a couple of hours writing, I will feel motivated to reposition the feet on the plank. As I recall, it takes about 5 minutes. She did it right once and we moved on.

Next we went to the teeter trainer. Today, she actually showed signs of wanting to hop over the yellow parts. I had to treat her just before the place where she started to hop (easily discernible because of her paw prints on the teeter) to slow her down. It worked like a charm. However, to prove that lessons learned are not transferable, when we tried it in the opposite direction, she tried to hop the yellow parts again. ARRGG! By the forth or fifth try, she was getting it pretty well. We have to limit reps with Morgan as she loses interest REALLY fast.

After that we went to the weave poles. Tom had set up the staggered weave poles open about a foot wide. Morgan tried to cheat to the target a couple of times and then realized she wasn't getting the treat until she did it my way, finally ran through all six poles, no problem. We'll move them close together on Tuesday.

Last we tried the sequence that she just didn't seem to get last Tuesday. However, we started the back chaining from the tunnel (last obstacle) rather than the jump (next to last obstacle). Duh! She did the tunnel 3 times, then jump tunnel twice, then jump, jump, tunnel twice. Finally we added a jump after the tunnel. I had her go over the last jump a couple of times but then went back to the very first jump so the sequence was jump, jump, tunnel, jump. She did it! Twice! I was very happy with that and quit on that note.

What I was even more happy about was that she stopped trying to run off after she went through the tunnel. She came to me for a treat. In fact, she finally showed Tom what a smart dog she is--not always ballistic. I was very proud of her behavior toward the end of our session. I hope I get more of that because it reinforces my belief that she is trainable.