It's been very cold here (average highs less than freezing,) so I've done little things inside the house. One practice session was solely calling Quinn to heel from various locations. We started with a step in front (facing the same direction) and built until I was 10 feet away facing him. (The finish on the Moving Stand.) The biggest challenge we had was going to the obedience club for a heeling seminar. I was actually the teacher. I took Quinn to be my demo dog. I was supposed to have a small group of people (5 or so) but due to some conflicts with an Agility class I ended up with 1 student taking the seminar and an Agility class being taught less than 10 feet away.
Quinn had issues with some of the dogs doing agility. Any dog he considered 'out of control' he barked at. Overall he did very well considering he's not used to being in the building with 8 dogs running agility in the next ring. I find that if Quinn views the situation as a 'Dog Show' is much more accepting of other dogs than if he sees it as 'Training.' At a dog show he'll tolerate a lot more than he would in the real world. I'm not sure if I do something different, or if it's the number dogs present, but he'll just settle right down at a show or fun match.
I used Quinn to show what a dog should look like when heeling, and then put him in a crate and demonstrated the beginning steps with Sage (Alicia's dog.) When it was time to talk about proofing, I got Quinn back out and did some more heeling. It was nice practice and the dogs doing agility were nice distraction. When Quinn makes a mistake I stop what I'm doing, by stepping out of position or just stop forward motion. If I continue to heel, then I've rewarded his inattention. I noticed that he's begun heeling wide on about turns, I'm sure I'm doing something to cause it. I'm going to have to tape our heeling sessions and find out why.
The biggest reward for teaching that seminar was at the end. When several people were standing around talking, Quinn went up to a woman and asked for attention. He's not nearly as scared of people as Jojo can be, but he is an Aussie and he's reserved with people. The fact she was a complete stranger and he ran up (and jumped on her) was a good thing. She had her Papillon sitting on a chair next to her. Quinn's met (and lived with) several Papillons, so he just ignored the dog and concentrated on the person. Now if it only warms up enough to go outside and train.
Alicia did a little practice with Quinn while she took care of my dogs, here's her experience with Quin practicing the Stand-Stay:
 "While it's true that I very rarely get to work with Marcy's dogs, when they are staying with me, I get to try lots of things with them. This time, Marcy wanted me to work specifically on Quinn's stand-stay. Quinn and I have a special relationship so I knew it would go either very well or rather badly. To my pleasure, it went rather well. I had Quinn get in heel position then gave him the cue to stand. Quinn did a great job of standing but either didn't see my signal for him to stay or was too excited to heed it. As a result, we had to do it again. This time, once I had Quinn in his stand position, I took a few seconds out to "set him up" in his stand position and he responded well to my "stay" and we were successful." |
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