Progress on Trick Training

I was sooo lazy today. Other than doing laundry, dishes and taking the trash out all I did was sit around and read blogs and play computer games. :) Oh well I did bake cupcakes. And they were yummy!

However I did work with the dogs because I promised I would!! I decided not to use the clicker since this trick is basic luring and I was being lazy as mentioned above lol. I also waited until late and didn't want to worry about separating the dogs. I put Storm in a down stay and worked with Jackal first. She broke the stay a couple of times because I realized I was saying 'come on' as encouragement for Jackal. Oops. Poor girlie was confused.

I noticed signs that we haven't been training in a while with both dogs. The two most noticeable things were snatching at the food and getting overly excited. I'll have to work on leave it with both of them. They both managed to calm down fairly quickly.

Jackal did great. I've worked on it with him before so he had a faint idea what was going on. He also knows peek-a-boo so has no issues with walking through my legs. He kept wanting to jump up for the food and also kept wanting to go around in front of me to sit. Another reason I really need to work on heeling or at least a side or finish cue. I might work on that too. No reason to limit to one trick (except for easing back into it lol).

So other than having to reset him (luring him into a finish at my side) he did good. I gave a treat for each pass through my legs. I hope to fade the lure as soon as possible. I'll start earlier and get the clicker out tomorrow.

When it was Storm's turn I put Jackal on the couch with my husband. He doesn't have as reliable of a stay so my husband was able to reinforce it for me while I focused on Storm. I hadn't initially planned to teach it to Storm as well but I figured why not?!

She resisted going through my legs strongly. She could not figure it out at all! She's also not a very strong lure follower. I'm actually surprised by that. I noticed she's way more aware of my body language than Jackal. When I was bending over to lure her through my legs she kept offering the bow lol. After a few rough tries of getting her to go through my legs (she wanted to pass in front of me) I finally stepped up to a wall so my toe and knee were almost touching it. After doing that a few times I was able to move away from the wall and she was luring neatly through my legs. I did one pass across the living room and called it good.

All in all they did very well! Better than I was expecting after not doing anything for almost a year. :) I'll update again next week. I'll also try to get more pictures up this week. Thanks for voting guys. Oh and I'll always take suggestions for more tricks.