Steamy Monday

Took the pups to the training building this morning. Peggy had opened it up and had started a couple of fans but it was already 83 degrees when we got there. I had a physical therapy appointment so I knew our training time would be short so I opted for working in the building.

Morgan's heeling is coming along. Today, I started out with a lure and quickly faded to a treat on the turns only. She is doing great on the left turns. The first time, I she bumped into me. I have exaggerated my cues to let her know that I am about to turn. I think she was catching on. We'll keep working on it. Her right turns are 3/4 of the time correct. She has been lagging but I have encouraged her, thrown a cookie (bad idea, she just keeps looking on the floor for a cookie), and finally went to only treating her when she was where I wanted her to be (DUH!--Clicker training). That worked like a charm.

I have to give a name to the right side heeling. I have a name I use with Merlin ---'heel' (left side is 'strut') I use Place instead of close but those words may sound too much alike. Maybe I should use 'Right'

A side note -- I CANNOT train Merlin to sit in heel position on my right side. I think it has to do with his vision in his left eye. he will heel on the right side --about a foot away. I'm only training for freestyle so it does not matter how far away he is. I'll work it into the routine.

Morgan's recall is getting to be very reliable. Today, she didn't even try to break her stay. He recall was not as fast as I would like (but. hey, it was 85 degrees by then). When it gets cooler, we'll work on speed.

I've been avoiding the dumbbell but I need to get to it. I can train the dumbbell in the house under air conditioning. I'm just so bad--been procrastinating on a million things I don't want to do.