What on earth is THAT?!

.....is essentially what Bran repeatedly asked me at training last night *sigh*

To start off we had to show that we'd taken the hand targetting to a point of repeated nose taps. Bran looked blankly at my hand and went "what on earth is THAT?!" Grrrrr! Up until we left the house, he could do 6 repeated hand targets with my hand in any position. I stood and waited for a while and eventually the lightbulb switched on and he proved that I wasn't an utter liar.

So then we had to demonstrate the targetting "something else". At that point I made a mistake because as I took the ball out of my pocket Bran lunged to tap it and I told him to 'wait' to give me a chance to put it on the floor. I was then not supposed to lure him into targetting the ball but he was clearly still very firmly in a 'wait' and wouldn't release from it! Eventually, he got up and took a step towards me and I thought we were getting somewhere. He then gave the ball a cursory glance and went "what on earth is THAT?!". Up until we left the house, he was running to target the ball wherever I put it - on a table, on the sofa, under the desk.... I stood and waited for a while and eventually the lightbulb switched on and, again, he proved that I wasn't an utter liar. And, thankfully, also targetted just with his nose and not his teeth!

To move things along, Jo had asked us to bring along a blanket or mat so that we could teach 'mat' and work up to sendaways. When that email had landed in my inbox, I was very pleased because, as you probably know, Bran knows 'on the mat' and well enough to go straight into a down wherever the mat is placed. So I was feeling rather smug when we started this exercise last night. I put the mat on the floor and smirked at Bran, who gave the mat a cursory glance and went.....you've guessed it....."what on earth is THAT?!" Arrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!!! At no point did the lightbulb come on and I'd just managed to get him to tentatively place a single paw on the mat before we wrapped that exercise for the night.

We were then asked to select a trick from a prepared list that we could start teaching our dogs. In my wisdom, I opted for barking on command as it is then (apparently!) easy to teach a counter command for quiet. I hooked Bran's lead up outside and proceeded to wind him up and get him bouncing and clicked and treated for each sound and he quickly built it up to repetitive big barks. Unbeknownst to me, chaos was ensuing indoors as the puppies assumed that Bran was barking them warnings and they were shrieking away in an attempt to see off the danger. Bless. Jo then came out to see how we were doing and Bran plonked his chocolate bottom on the floor and smiled at her. And refused to make a sound. She asked me to show her what I'd been doing to make him bark, so I squeaked the toy and talked to him in an excited, squeaky voice and he just smiled at me. Clearly "what on earth are you DOING?!"

I can't wait to see how tomorrow morning goes with his new 'down' command......