Remediation.

Perri is back to school too!  We started the next session of Open Obedience this evening.  We have a new instructor since our prior instructor has a new litter of puppies to care for at home.

We ran through some heeling practice and some drop on recall practice.  Perri was rather lovely with her heeling (even on the Figure 8!) and so so with her DOR.

When we moved to dumbbells....  Well all of the other dogs were retrieving with varying levels of expertise and Perri "does not look happy about her dumbbell." in our instructors words.  

And that's true.  Perri is really not all that happy about her dumbbell.  Especially not in class.  At home I am rewarding fast running to the dumbbell, snappy grabs and other signs of life/enthusiasm.  They do occur...at home.  Sometimes.

Our instructor was kind enough to come over and talk to me a little bit about Perri.  She suggested that I take a step back and start shaping object grabbing of all kinds.  She would like to see Perri eager to pick up random objects and toys from the ground.  She says this should help "build Perri's ego up."  I agree and I think this is a good plan.  Tonight we started with a ball of paper crumpled up.  Perri was overjoyed to be working with a fun new person!  She shaped looks at the ball of paper and moved up to nose touches.  Nose touching the paper wasn't so easy for Perri. (sigh.)  She did it pretty readily when the ball of paper was being held, but on the ground Perri would peck the air and then wag at our instructor.  A nose touch on a ball of paper?  I guess that's a lot to ask for.  She did do it though when our instructor held out on her and she got a major jackpot and party for her efforts!

I appreciated the customized advice and extra help that we received tonight and Perri and I will work on confidence building with both her hula hoop and object play.  Whatever it takes!