Last night Irie and I had week 2 of Performance Puppy.
In week one, we worked on tug, recalls, and Doggie Zen/It’sYer Choice. The recalls are not your conventional recall, they are the precursor for “here.” Kathleen restrained the pups while saying “Ready, Set, Go,” at “set” the handler ran off dragging and shaking their tug. When the puppy caught up we played a game of tug. We worked this from both sides.
This week we brought our crates and started the class playing crate games. First we fed at the rear of the crate (either through the vent of a vari-kennel or through the wires of a wire crate), because most of the time good things only happen at the front of the crate. Then we practiced opening and closing the door of the crate and making lots of noise, while rewarding at the back of the crate. Finally we moved to opening the crate door and taking a step away, but not so far away you couldn’t close the door if the puppy made the wrong choice and tried to exit the crate.
Irie is too smart. When it was time to move on to the next game she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave her crate! Kathleen set up 4 perch stations and half of the class worked on It’s Yer Choice while the other half worked on shaping perch work. Initially I didn’t break it down enough for missy and I ended up with Irie sitting and staring at me. That passed very quickly and she started putting her little feeties up on the perch. At one point she offered her rear feet up on the perch! Even though that wasn’t what we were working on I immediately clicked and treated. I had a really hard time trying to shape Bug to move his rear feet onto the perch versus his front, and I am happy I captured it with Irie.
Irie understands the It’s Yer Choice game so well. We had already moved to treats on the floor. She is rock solid at that, so the next step is putting “get ‘em” on cue. Doggie Zen never allows the dog to take the treats, at any point, while It’s Yer Choice does put it on cue. Irie said, “No way, it’s a trick!” It took me quite a bit to convince her that yes, she could take the treats when I said “Get ‘em.”
We ended class with more recalls and tug.
We will have a busy week trying to keep up with our homework. I am looking forward to building on both the crate games and perch work.
5 comments:
Sounds like it was a fun class! Irie seems very smart . . . you are going to have lots of fun with her!
Sounds like a really good class. I'm having a hard time getting my dogs to think about their back feet at all, and wish I had started rewarding back foot movement and placement when I first got them...
The recalls you guys are doing sound like out Flyball recalls. Thats basically what we do at first, then adding jumps. Then, that recall over jumps is our normal warm up at the beginning of a run.
Puppy foundation work sure has come a long way since I started agility back in 2003/2004 with Wilson. It's really amazing all the stuff we teach our dogs now. Your class sounds great!
That sounds like such a great class and like you guys are doing so well. That has to be so much fun!!!
Wow, that sounds like the best class ever. I hope Irie knows how lucky she is to be with you guys :).
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