The adventures of SD Juno and SDIT Kaline (and their human, Colt).

09 August 2012

Much better day of training

Yesterday pretty much sucked, in terms of working with Kaline. He was great on pack walks, but oh man, when I tried to actually work on commands with him later, he was not having it. The clicker, which always seems to get Juno hyped up and eager to try out new things lest they yield treats, seemed to totally dampen Kaline. My goal had been to start him on directed retrieves, and the more I clicked him for literally any glance, even, at the bandanna we were working with, the less he wanted to have anything to do with it.

So while he sulked over by the couch—that was kind of shocking, that all he wanted to do was lie around and do nothing—I worked Juno, and that was great fun. Boy, was she up for working! She'd been butting in already, grabbing the bandanna and delivering it to hand with a flourish, like she was telling Kaline, "It's not that hard, see how it's done!" So we did some of that, worked on finding the heel position, finding front, recalls, various tricks. Good pup.

Anyway, hopefully we'll be getting together with Sonja this weekend, and she can magically teach Kaline a formal retrieve! We're planning to do the Circus Club horse show Saturday and a movie at the Stannie on Sunday. Kaline probably won't come to the second one, obviously.
Kaline looking all noble this morning.
Today was a lot better. We got to sleep in, had a great pack walk with the boys, then had lunch and headed to training. We had a lot of dogs, but also a lot of trainers, so I got to spend a lot of time working on things with Kaline.

First we worked on remote sits and downs, one of his strengths. It was hard to keep his attention today, though, because he was right next to a very attractive black shepherd mix named Nora. Nora looks very similar to Juno's boyfriend, Ellis; Kaline found her irresistible, haha. He did a lot better on recalls than I expected, given how hot it was.

We worked a ton on leave it, while I was keeping watch on him, Juno and another dog named Mancha (during jumping, since there were lots of us, we could have about six dogs out on supervised down-stays instead of tethered). Kaline got to where I could put treats on his paws and leave them alone. Now we need to work on him leaving it when the "it" is moving, or Kaline's moving. Still, progress!
Chilling with the Big Dog.
My favorite accomplishment of the day was his stand-stay. We worked on it in a couple different locations, and he held it pretty well! He even let me move his feet around, and on the second mini-session, he left them where I put them (wonder of wonders). Stand is super important—I'm glad he's getting that, at least!
Kaline doing a stand-stay!
Toward the end of training, we got a complete idiot in among the dogs. A paramedic or something. She walked in like she always comes by, which confused us, because she doesn't. Of course, she made a beeline for our most anxious dog, Peter, who has made incredible strides but still is far less tolerant of human rudeness than, say, one of the Labradors.

This woman did everything wrong. Peter was giving "please go away" signals as she approached, and they only got more intense. Instead of asking to pet him and/or coming from the side to let him sniff her, she dispensed with these niceties and just went for his head, no warning. Peter tried ducking away but she had him cornered against a wall. So what'd he do? He snapped, and she would have deserved the bite had it landed. Did she back away then? Nope, kept manhandling the clearly unhappy dog, until Kristin was able to get him out of there. The stupidity of some people fairly boggles the mind. 

2 comments:

  1. Poor Peter i would have bit her too rude much! YAY to the stand stay that is a hard one! As for Clicker Mistral HATES the clicker he did the same thing. So we moved away from it to a method he enjoyed more. Glad you had a better training day :)

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    1. Kaline doesn't hate the clicker ... it worked to teach him a couple simple tricks as well as touch. I think he was just having an off day, plus he hasn't quite "learned how to learn." We don't just do clicker though, so if he really ends up showing an aversion to it, we'll do like you and Mistral and cut it out and switch entirely over to mostly luring etc. So happy to see Doyle doing well, please keep up with the lovely photos!! You have such a handsome crew.

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