The Spaniel Annals

Gael is currently on a no-food-during-training diet, and the results have been promising and fascinating. This training “diet” will go on for another week, and while I’m not seeing the brightness I get when I train with food, I’m certainly seeing commitment to the task and willingness to keep going. We had one terrible training session at the outset where she was quite sullen and had to be corrected into working, but since them I’ve been happy with her response. Her favorite bumper is really helping…

A more ragged, dirty bumper is not in my toy bag, but this favorite sure helps keep Gael up and working. In the meantime, I’m learning a LOT about praising her for effort, inserting play for good work, and in general trying to make myself more interesting. In some ways, especially when we work on her dumbbell mouthing, she actually seems to be concentrating better on the task at hand, rather than getting agitated about when she’ll get her cookie. I begin to wonder if the food isn’t actually a distraction for her. A recent snapshot taken at class on Tuesday night shows her really pushing through her figure 8:

I never went through this “diet” with the springers, but these 2 weeks are revealing a lot about how much I tend to use food as crutch, and with a dog like Gael, a lot, or at least some of that food might be unnecessary and even distracting. Things that make you go hmmm….