Platform Introduction!

Today we got straight to work playing with the new platform!  Perri and Molly have both had extremely minimal work on any type of platform like this, in Perri's case a year ago.  In Molly's case, over two years ago.

I am beyond proud of Perri for the duration of this training session.  And I stopped it, not her.  I know I keep saying it, but a few months ago, she would have done this for only 30 seconds at most before walking away to lay down.  I thought that with a new thing, this might recur.  I'm happy to see her take on something semi-new and want to keep at it!

The goal here was to just get four feet on the platform.  I'm kicking myself for not clicking some of her rear end swings towards the platform, that's not cool.  This is probably a lot of why Perri used to shut down in the past.  She would try something, some approximation of what I wanted, and I failed to click.  It's good to see that she is willing to keep trying things and keep working, but shame on me for raising the criteria too fast.  (I assure, this was not a councious decision, I am just dense.  Eternally dense.)

I am laughing at the difference here with Molly!  Molly offers things so fast and it is such a contrast, my mind is literally spinning trying to mark what I want!  She literally blasts onto the scene!  There are already gouge marks in the foam on the platform from her releasing off of it.  Oh, that Molly!
I am not happy with my reward position at times through this video, I do a lot of pulling her off of the platform.  She also seems to want to scrunch herself up and do sits, but I think a lot of that is my reward position and my not being very close to the platform.  She's trying to learn and do the right thing, but it's important to her that she is close to her treat!  It's not the end of the world, though, and we will refine ourselves as we go along.  And have fun during!


I am already seeing, just in this intro shaping session, how useful these platforms can be to teach straight fronts.  You see how much more accurate Molly was able to be after I moved to the other side of the platform, because she could approach it straight on and just walk on to it.  Rather than approaching it and then having to think to rotate her body onto it.  Fun!  When the dog has to make a decision to get their body entirely on that platform and the platform helps them to be straight, it really helps them to learn the actual position - so much more than luring into front.