The Spaniel Annals

Today I pushed the restart button on Journey’s freestyle routine.  First, I won’t be asking her to put any of the sequences together for at least another week, while we work on the individual pieces of the routine, trying to build her confidence and speed.  Those pieces are:

• rightside heeling,
• spins in different positions (in front and in heel position) with very limited or no hand signals,
• right-handed spins (called “twists”) while heeling on the righthand side,
• “gee” (which is a lateral movement in heel position),
• serpentine heeling,
• calling her to front from either side as a transition move,
• and jumping over me to retrieve the hat.

Then to build back her confidence and speed, I used a highly prized toy as a reward, a tug toy from Clean Run with bunny fur on the end.  One spin in front with little or no hand guidance meant a release and tug with the toy.  Another spin, release and tug with the toy.  Then two spins, release and tug.  With the moving spins incorporated into heeling, as soon as she completed the spin, I threw the toy out where the spin ended and told her “get it!”  This use of her prey drive really helped her enthusiasm, as opposed to yesterday when she was starting to shut down.

While she’s working on the pieces, I need to get the full routine re-choreographed and start practicing it.  It’s no good having all of her sequences ready if I can’t properly cue her and transition her to the next sequence!  It will be just one more reason for my neighbors to think I’m nuts, dancing around in the yard to Shania Twain.:-)

In the meantime, I’ve resolved that this is the summer Gael really understands Stay in an adult way.  Every night this week before dinner, she does stays with the big dogs.

The first night, she had to be corrected several times after the 1-minute mark.  This time, with 3 minutes on both the sit and down stay, she only needed to be corrected once, and that was when I was trying to give Rozzie her cookie.   Gael is also making some excellent progress with her halts, thanks to some great guidance from my instructor, Sharon Colvin.

Onward!

Note to self: I’m only human, and unfortunately I can get frustrated and discouraged sometimes with the dog training, hence yesterday’s post.  I’m glad that I have the ability to pick myself back up, problem-solve, come up with solutions and try again, always on a more positive note.  I love that my dogs will always try again with me.