Oct 29th - lesson

So today Andrea and I went to Arlene Lehman's place for private lessons. We started with the puppies first doing some gridwork, then touches and finally working on the tunnel without using any commands. The gridwork was good, Ripley was a bit off balance going in due to his vulture type sit but finished it nicely. The touches actually got a bit better. The tunnel exercise was to have Rip sit calmly beside me then release him with my body facing the tunnel. Once in, I was throwing the toy to the exit.

Homework for Ripley:
His sit-stay is better than it was but still needs to be worked on - work on less exciting places and build.
We talked about Ripley's refusal to hand touch. I need to be firm with him when he uses any teeth or vocals and I need to feed from the same hand that he is touching.
Need to find stairs or else build a plank for him to nose touch off of. *make sure to have lots of food ready and put food on target the second he does the touch. I can put tape down if he is pushing it around.
Need to work on the "it's your choice" game with food. This way he will know that food is coming and not move his head towards me.
Need to work on the tunnel entrances without verbal or hand commands.

Baxter's session went well. We started with the same grid work as the puppies. He had trouble getting into the last bounce instead he was leaping over the last two jumps together. We then moved on to a tunnel - jump - frame/tunnel/jump sequence. We did not give any commands expecting them to come out of the tunnel and take the frame as it was directly in front. If we wanted them to take the tunnel, we needed to use a threadle arm to get them off the straight line. Baxter went into the tunnel each time but was just anticipating the change but was not really coming into my arm. The final sequence we had to keep the dogs on our arm past the frame/tunnel and go past the jump then allow them to jump back over it. I needed to use treats to keep B on my arm for this.

Homework for Baxter:
Need to work on "it's your choice" game with food the same as Ripley
Need to make sure when using threadle arm to reward for coming into my arm