Having fun

Well both Bran and I are having lots of fun learning our new exercises.

Having managed to get to a point where he was pre-empting the new 'stop' command by stopping and immediately turning on his heel and running to fetch the treat that I hadn't yet thrown behind him, I decided to bring the clicker out and use that to capture Bran's 'stop' BEFORE he had a chance to turn on his heel. By last Wednesday, he was reliably stopping to every hand/vocal command and holding it for a good 20 seconds before having the treat thrown. On Thursday we went to class and I got the old 'Are you speaking English? What is this 'stop' you speak of?' from him. Swine ;o)

Today, we took the 'stop' command to the park and I used a squeaky Kong ball instead of treats and my boy was perfect. Just perfect. Of course, we'll see how he performs on Thursday but at least now I have it on record should he call me before a jury doubting my training again!

Learning a finish has been........ermmmm...........entertaining. I've been trying to guide Bran round to my right with one treat, then offering a treat in my left hand to bring him round to my left and into a sit. Nightmare. Not fun. Hard work. Every single time without fail as I remove the treat in my right hand to guide him with my left, he would follow the right hand back out and get himself in a right old tizzy! Clicker to the rescue again! I started clicking him just for following my right hand to halfway round my back. Once that was nailed, I commanded him to go that far then lured him round to my side and a sit. He can now do a finish in one movement to the command 'go round' and a brief hand signal, although we do need to make it quicker and get his 'sit' a bit closer. Mucho progress though :)

What else have we been doing?

Changing pace with onlead walking: 'steady' warns him we're going to slow it down; 'come on then' warns him we're going to get much faster.

All of a sudden he seems to know 'heel' for perfect offlead heelwork which bemuses me as I don't remember ever teaching him 'heel' as a command. We've done a lot of heelwork both on and off lead but I've never given it a command so am amazed that I suddenly have a dog who can 'heel' like a pro!

Recalling whilst I'm still moving and keeping him to heel and in pace for 10 paces is just beautiful. For some reason he just "got" this exercise the very first time that we tried it at class and continues to nail it every single time.

'Mat' is being dusted off and solidified so that I can reward him on the mat and he doesn't come off of it, even if there are distractions around. He did this brilliantly on Saturday night when he was on his mat whilst Sophie and I practised 'mat' with the puppies.

I still need to start clicking him for having 4 feet on the floor when people come through the door as I think that's going to be his hardest exercise for the silver exam. I also need to do some more work with getting him to focus on me if we are walking around someone with food. He pays no interest if we are eating at home but apparently it's very exciting if someone is eating at class!

Anyway. That's where we are for now. I feel happy with the progress that we're making and was delighted when an older couple who had obviously seen us training at the park came up to me to tell me what a lovely, obedient dog Bran is. I absolutely agree!