Today's walk was amazing! I could not have asked for a better end to a very stressful day at work. I love my dog!
When I got home it was 45 degrees outside. Lucy didn't need any exercise so I set out for a long, focused, training walk with Juneau. She was great. She even started looking at me when we walked like those perfect Labradors. The key was low distractions (squirrels go to sleep after dark and the neighbors don't walk their dogs) and new bacon-flavored training treats. The high value treats vs dog food made all the difference.
When I stopped, she stopped and sat dead next to me and looked at my face. If I stopped because she was ahead of me, she backed up and sat right next to me and looked at my face. So many treats were had! You could really see her trying to figure out how to get more treats out of me! "If I walk with her and look at her face, she gives me treats! She stopped. Hmmm. If I sit down I sometimes get treats. No . . . hmmmm. What if I look at her too. Treat!" It was amazing.
We also tried "Watch" outside for the first time. Basically I say "Juneau Watch" and she has to sit and look at my face while I stuff treats in her mouth. The first time I could only get one in before she looked away, but by the end of the walk, I pumped 5 treats into her when I said it. This will lead to me being able to get her to pay attention to me instead of other dogs but right now it is just instead of nature. (All distractions are hard for this girl!)
That is awesome! We have always hard a time with getting Twinkie to look at our faces. Basically, if she even thinks we might have treats, she looks at our hands (or the spot where they disappear behind our backs). She may glance at my face, but it's such a fast glance that it's hard to mark it. And if I do mark it, then she really won't look at my face again until she gets the treat. I've been told to hold the treat on my forehead while saying "watch me", but that has clearly made her think she needs to track the treat. Any suggestions?
ReplyDeleteGo Juneau! Good girl! sounds like an amazing walk, Beccy - and interesting after "forgetting everything" at the kennel I thought you might have to work through a lot more in order to get it back. I see a lot of parallels with my feldenkrais journey actually, in that i'll achieve something new after a session that is amazing and awesome for a little while and it won't stay with me for longer than maybe a day or two but then as i keep doing more sessions (and sometimes even sessions that are totally unrelated to the new movement) it takes me much less time to re-acquire that knowledge. a master feldenkrais trainer once said "You must lose it many times before it is yours". It seems that experiential learning is a series of peaks and valleys. Glad to see juneau hit a peak so soon after jumping all over you from the kennel :)
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