Lyra - Four months

Most of my training time with Lyra is really structured play – play that gets me the behaviors I want with maximum joy and energy.

There are also a few skills that are more easily mastered when the dog is calm.  For these, I use food as the reward.  Food leads to a thinking, clear head.  With Lyra, I work on these types of skills in small doses since her food drive is limited.

In this video, I’m showing her skill building work in the following areas:

1)      Pivots in “front” position.   I have her front feet on a Frisbee to help her – she knows that her feet must remain on the Frisbee above all else.   If I say “come” while I pivot, she’ll try and sit when I stop (I didn’t teach this but I think my husband did).  She is accurate enough in her pivots that I am allowing this behavior to emerge - I would suggest you avoid the sit until your dog is reasonably accurate on the pivots in front without them.  Look for a straight body when you stop moving – straight bodies with static front feet tend to end with straight, tucked sits.  Be very careful about your hand position when you pivot and when you reward – try and keep your hands out the picture so your puppy does not rely on your hands in front to understand what is expected here.  When you do reward, make sure your hand position reinforces the dog’s straight body position – normally your midline.  Alternate your reward hand.

2)      Pivots in” heel” position.  Again, I use the Frisbee to stabilize her front end. I have named this skill “get in” – pivot next to me while I move away from you.  Note that my choice of hand position for feeding reinforces a straight body.   I do not ask for a sit when we stop – that will come later.

3)      Positions – once again, that handy Frisbee is called into play.  Lyra is practicing her sit, down and stand commands.   I lure with my hand into the correct position.  The Frisbee is to keep her front feet steady; I want her to do any combination of positions without moving her front feet.  We have a long road ahead – I’d estimate that we’ve done these about 500 times, yet she seems to have relatively little concept that the words I’m using predict the hand cue.   I have chosen not to shape her positions because I am very particular about how they are completed – no movement of front end – and I do not have enough confidence in my shaping skills to believe  that I can get that result at this time.  I also do not delay very long between the verbal and the hand cue – I have found that if I delay she tends to start moving her front feet – my number one priority here is no front foot movement.

4)     Mark – while holding Lyra back, I toss a highly visible cookie (goldfish!) straight ahead with my right hand.  I then switch my hands so my right hand holds her ruff, and my left hand gives a signal on the side of her head to indicate where she should look. I then release her to the cookie.  This will give us a head start on the glove exercise and the go outs for Utility – my hand on the side of Lyra’s head will mean “look out there where I’m indicating”. Combined with the “I’m holding your ruff so go out with speed” cue, I hope to get a clean mark and a lot of speed going away.  Even with the goldfish, I can see she has trouble finding the food at a distance.

5)      To end the session, I transition her to play by throwing a toy for her final mark.