August 28 - Loose leash walking

Concentrated on trying to clearly distinguish my walking criteria tonight.  We practiced Heel (traditional meaning, walk on left with close attention and trying to keep in the appropriate location), Let's Go (loose leash walking, I determine speed and direction, but Rigger is free to explore so long as the leash remains loose), and Go Sniff (dog sets speed and direction, and I need to match it so that the leash remains loose).  His heeling has gotten much better (although we only do it for very short distances), and he does seem to be perfectly happy to have me take control in the Let's Go parts.  It needs work, but it's starting to really look like he's had some training and that we know what we're doing!  And at the end of the walk, we played tug in the front yard!  He's still not keen on playing out on walks, but this is a good start.  He is giving me Focus when asked out on the walk about 70% of the time, depending on what may be distracting him at the time.  If there is something interesting, or, especially, something worrying, he won't focus.  The rest of the time he will.  So we are making progress!

Getting up to speed - Relationship Building through Play

Okay... time to play catch up.  I have done a baseline video for the Play class.  Actually did that on Wednesday.


And this is from today, when I was trying to do the "teeny tiny tugs" to build up Rigger's desire to actually tug.  I think we have room for improvement, but I did find out some interesting things.  First, I had a crash course in how to trim video!  This is excerpts from a much longer video.

The first :15 is what usually happens.  He's thrilled to chase the toy, grab it, and take it to ground, and then generally runs around like crazy with it.  He did that several times, which got cut out.  I believe, in my heart of hearts, that he would love to play keep away with me.  He wants to be chased!

After several rounds of that, he brought me a different toy, "blue dog".  I tried doing some teeny tiny tugs standing up, but he kept doing his other favorite play style:  grab it, hit the ground, and roll over on his back and wiggle around.  I'm thinking that, with other dogs, that might be an invitation to play bitey-face.  If the wiggling around gets him to a toy, or a foot, he will chomp down on it.  Not sure exactly how to interact with him in that situation.  So, I decided to try something different and sat down for the rest of the play session. 

Up to :42, he's sort of interested in playing.  He's staying close to me, and interacting, but his energy level is very low.  He's not really tugging, just holding the toy.  At :42, he was distracted by a flying insect.

Around :56, I decided that tug wasn't being very engaging for him, so I decided to add in more movement.  That got his interest!  I'm not entirely sure where this falls on the toy play vs "personal play with a toy" scale.  There wasn't much tugging.  At 1:07, he takes the toy to the ground.  At 1:28 he wins the toy and takes it away, but seemed to realize it was more fun to play with me than on his own.  At 1:35, he brings it back for more interactive play.  At 1:47, he does a modified version of the "roll over on your back to wrestle/bitey-face" game, only going on his side, possibly because of being between my legs at the time.  Altogether, the session lasted around 17 minutes.  We didn't do much tugging, but we had fun.  I also tried something entirely new, and laid on my back and pulled the toy over me, which he seemed to enjoy.  And I do have a better tug toy on order.

And after all of this, we had dinner, and THEN we went for a walk at Central Park.  (After Pixie had her walk.  When my trainer warned me that having two dogs was much more work than having one, she wasn't joking!)  I decided to do this walk on the waist leash, hands-free, to see where I was at with the loose-leash walking.  We have room for improvement, but it was generally good.  I let him switch sides too much, which becomes really noticeable when the leash is wrapping around your legs!  But he did reasonably good at listening to verbal commands, and didn't try to ski me anywhere.  And we watched people launching some sort of flying toy that glowed.  Highly reinforced, since it was sort of like fireworks without the bangs.