Catching Up and Moving On ...

OK, now that I know Gata is not a Labrador, and does not have the Labrador version of EIC what am I going to do?

With the weather cooling and the days shortening it is not really all that hard to avoid collapses and probably won't be for the next 6 months or so. During that time I plan to have a blast with the dogs and bring Gata's conditioning level as high as I can. With my landlord's permission, I hope to buy a pool in the spring. That should help to keep us all active during the heat of the summer.

Last night, we played games in the spare bedroom. Did little position types of activities with both dogs for their dinner. While one dog works, the other is in a down stay. We've been doing this for a few days in the kitchen/dining room area. It's a bigger area with a clear separation between the two areas - kitchen cabinets/ breakfast bar. But it is a little harder to work on because of the hardwood floors. So we moved to the spare bedroom, which is smaller but has carpeting.

Both dogs found it much harder to maintain a down stay with me so close giving position commands to the other dog. But both started to get the hang of it and I'm sure will continue to get better. I actually think this is a great exercise for both of them - impulse control and having to discriminate between cues. Both are fully focused on me the entire time but have to differentiate between when I am focused on them and when I am not. I suspect that this is a difficult concept so am definitely just repositioning them quietly when they break and reinforcing for good behavior with more of their dinner.

Also worked on the "hold" exercise with both dogs. Gata really doesn't need much work on this but I've decided that it never hurts to reinforce the basics so don't mind repeating stuff with her as I work on it with Tor. Plus, it helps me to recall things that I have done with her that worked and make sure that I incorporate them with Tor.

Tor wasn't really all that excited about holding a wood dowel in his mouth to earn part of his dinner. That doesn't really worry me. I've only started working them for their dinner in about the last week or so since it is quite dark out by the time I get home. He prefers to do more active stuff so finds the hold work kind of boring.

That reminds me of something I was thinking of last night. I have noticed, both in horses and in dogs, that the Germans (in particular, but maybe other nationalities that I am not as familiar with) have a tolerance for repetition that is quite amazing. In horses, I always thought that they could get away with it because they tended to work with a different breed/type of horse than I did. But, I'm pretty sure that's not the case with dogs, at least not with Belgians. So what is it that they do that allows them to do the kind of repetition that became so obvious as a key element when I attended the Peter and Connie Scherk and Florian Knabl clinic? Hmm, I have to think about that. Is it that the dogs get bored with repetition or that I get bored with repetition? And, either way, how do I make repetition a more normal part of our training plan??

Unfortunately, this type of work is not really a good outlet for all of their physical energy ;-)  So I continued to get mauled throughout the evening by one or the other of them ;-)