Ein Training Log

With an early day off of work this week as well as two actual free evenings, I was able to make time for some Ein training sessions.  (Plus, Perri's rehab exercises are so much smoother lately - we have a rhythm so things don't take quite as long.)

We only worked on Stand for Exam one time this week - on down time in Ein's weekly rally obedience class.  Ein has been doing well on his stand-stays in the lobby of our training building, so I decided to add a human distraction.  I had one person walk along side of us, about two feet away.  He did not even break his gaze with me.  I asked another person to walk in a circle around us and this also did not phase him.   That doesn't surprise me, "Stand with Distraction" is a Cynosport Level 3 Bonus sign and Ein has never had a problem with it.  I asked her to walk around us again and when she got nearly to Ein's right side, she stopped walking.  Ein noticed, her pause created enough spatial pressure to challenge him.  He quickly reoriented to me with his ears not quite as perky as they had been.  I asked her to walk away and jackpotted Ein.  That was enough for one night!

As I expected, when we actually put in the work on the dumbbell, Ein progressed quickly.  We had a session or two still stuck on being a frozen corgi statue with his dumbbell hold.  Nope, cannot walk and hold that thing at the same time.  Out of the question.  I ditched the chin rest and started asking for hand touches.  Still nothing.  I started asking for running to a hand touch with no DB in Ein's mouth, kept it super upbeat and of course successful.  I started mixing the hand touches in with his holds and finally got a weight shift forward while holding the DB.  Click.  And alternate back to the happy fun hand touches without DB.  It wasn't long before he was stepping towards the hand touch while still holding the DB.  Yay!

The lightbulb went on and we are enjoying stitching together all the little links in the behavior chain.  Pick up to hand touch.  Pick up walk to hand touch.  Tonight I got brave and wanted to see if he would pick up, turn and bring the DB to my hand.  (We have worked on the pick up and turn separately)  This was no issue!   Initially I had the DB about half a foot away from us (sent him from "heel position", I was sitting down.)

Finally I threw it about four feet away and held his collar and then let him fly.  He dove at the DB, picked up, turned around and ran to me and pressed it into my hand and wagged his tail.   Woohoo!!!!!!!  Things are coming together nicely!  Now that we got over that "can't walk and chew gum at the same time" bump, progress is huge.

Holds on his Platform.