I posted this on obedience poodle list to get feedback and thought it would be good to put it in Morgan's blog as well.

The first is of me training Morgan in the 12-step heeling method.

http://youtu.be/PbvA00ldwUk

We are at step 15. What you do is heel starting

with one step, dog touches your palm with her nose, and then do two steps,three steps and so on to 12 steps. Then you start over with one step for the next set of 12. We have completed the first 12 steps and we are on to the next set of 12. I see a lot of mistakes in this video. First, I didn't once reward her at step 12, next, I turned back and looked at her when she lagged instead of stopping and starting over. I know there were other problems but those were the ones that stood out to me the most.

The next video is of Morgan and the dumbbell.

http://youtu.be/7YaTByubsBw

We have been having so much trouble with her kicking the dumbbell and chasing it that I have tried to throw it into a corner. That has helped with the kicking but it has also slowed her down. Mistakes I made here are so many that I don't even want to start listing them. The ones that I hate that I did were the ones where I lost focus on my goal. I wanted to concentrate on a clean pick up. Instead, I got annoyed that she was going so slowly and tried to speed her up. I even threw a play toss -oh so WRONG.

How the heck am I going to teach her not to kick the dumbbell when I reinforce it by throwing a play toss. Not only that, you will see that I even gave her a treat after she kicked the dumbbell. ARRRGGGG!

Morgan's weaves were AWESOME today and she was definitely having fun. I think tomorrow I'm going to have to bring out the jumps and tunnels so that she can have a blast. 

I also asked one of my training buddies to help me with distracting Morgan .  Again, she did AWESOME.  My friend even touched her on her set-up and she stopped looking away after 3 tries :)  There may be hope for this girl yet :)

Morgan did 15 steps 12 plus 3 more with enthusiasm and in proper position today. YAY!

Morgan and I have been working on agility, obedience and freestyle. While we have no ambitions for showing in obedience any time soon, my  hope is to have her start showing in agility this fall and we will have a freestyle performance in  October.  One thing I have discovered about Morgan (can you believe I'm still learning about how to teach this dog?) is that she get adrenaline pumping and she cannot think. I still do not think she pays attention to words but I need to work on that--word discrimination. I like that 20 times a day for 20 day tip that Chris J taught us in a workshop. 

So far Morgan is doing 6 straight up weave poles some of the time.  I see that I need to start working sequences with her again since we were lousy with it on Wednesday and I need to still work on the jumping work including strength training.

My biggest problem with Morgan is that she doesn't see the point of most things and she doesn't understand why there are rules when she does have fun.  What to do, what to do