This Week Is Going To Be Fun.....

Back at KC Bronze training class today and I am very pleased to report that Bran wasn't attacked! LOL!

He was rather wary of the GSD and gave him a very wide berth, but settled well and got lots of treats and praise if he ignored him and just focussed on me.

We did some Bronze work today on the 1 minute down-stay with distractions and on the waiting and going through a gate exercise, but also did some Gold exercises on just using verbal commands without hand signals or treats!

The 1 minute down-stay is a work on progress with Bran as I had to put him back into a down twice after the initial command during the 1 minute. Now I know that down is his least favourite command and the one he is most likely to fidget in or break out of and I know that I've given him a lot of leeway with this because I'm never quite sure how much being in a down hurts his elbows. I'm still not entirely sure how to tackle this, but may need to do a bit of research and see if I can establish whether it is causing him discomfort/pain or whether he is just being silly.

The going through a gate exercise was good for him as it was broken down into a verbal sit just before the mark and this was repeated several times, then a sit-stay whilst we took one pace on past the mark, then calling them past the mark and he was really quite good with this.

And then it was on to the verbal commands.

Verbal sits were absolutely spot-on and very fast, even to a whisper. Trying to put him into a down without being in a sit first just didn't happen. Again, he's had a lot of leeway with downs as I've already said but every single time I asked for a down, he offered a sit. Eventually, Jo asked if he always does a down from a sit and he does, mainly because I feel he's sort of feeling his way down carefully. I've never asked for a drop-down as he seems incredibly uncomfortable doing it that way. However, Jo did show me another way of getting him to down which involves him folding backwards into so that his hips take the weight before his elbows do.

So, to clarify, before the next clicker class on Tuesday he needs to be solidly hand targetting and targetting something else. Before next Thursday, he needs to be responding faster to verbal commands and I have to completely retrain his down.

Hmmmmm.

Wish me luck!!!

Oh, and as a little PS, Moss is now refusing the liver cake that I so lovingly made for them on Monday and will only eat Bran's gluten-free, dairy-free version, the little monkey!