I took video today of both closing a door and fetching his leash and I'll have it up sometime tomorrow. I had a really long day at work and I just want to sit on the couch and do nothing lol.
I'm a little frustrated with myself because I knew I wasn't in a good mood for training and I did it anyway when I could have just done it tomorrow . . . it didn't go well. I'm sure most of it was me, but Jackal also did very poorly with his new trick. Could he really have made a lucky guess the other day and not actually know the vocal cue?? Since he appears confused I'm going to wait until I'm not so tired and back up a few steps to see if I can tell where we went wrong. I'm also going to leave his other tricks alone and just focus on the freestyle routine because he's having trouble working on several different things at once. I guess he doesn't multitask any better than I do lol! I'll post the video tomorrow. I'm off the next two days and the weather is going to be horrible so I'll focus on Jackal indoors. :)
Oh I know what you mean. Sometimes I just don't feel at all like walking the dogs and I will force myself to do it and it always turns out bad. I am grouchy, dogs sense it and misbehave. Better to wait until your mentals are in order to practice your moves. Hang in there.
ReplyDeleteMango Momma
Oh Honey does that sometimes - she seems to get something really quickly but then the next time we come to it, she acts like she's never heard of that trick before! It can be really frustrating. I think that's normal for dog training - 1 step forward, 2 steps back! :-)
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've also done that when I trained in a bad mood - ALWAYS regret it later. I invariable end up losing my temper at Honey and she just gets more "slow & sullen" when I'm like that and the whole thing ends in tears. But usually when you start afresh the next day or something, it's all fine again. Thank goodness dogs live in the moment and are quick to forgive & forget! :-)
I do agree, though, that trying to do too much can overwhelm the dog. Since the Freestyle has a deadline and the other stuff doesn't, maybe it would be a good idea to just focus on Freestyle stuff first. Even if you're not progressing with this specific new trick, you can still work on stringing the other moves together into a sequence and practising that with him until he knows it really well...
Good luck!
Hsin-Yi