Today was a good work day for Hazel. We did some more Heel work and practiced the Implied Stay in both a Sit and a Down. She toils more with the Implied Stay with the Sit because she tends to anticipate a Heel command where there isn't one. But with Down she settles right in and is ready to stay put for a while. She let me walk in circles around her, step over her and I was able to step fairly far away from her before she showed signs that she was going to get up.
We also worked on the Come command more heavily today and she is slowly improving. She really drags her feet with this command. She is getting small corrections if she stops entirely before getting to me but we are mostly working with happy voice encouragement at this point.
Hazel is way too treat motivated at the moment so we are not using any food at all during her training. She gets food at meal times and a milk bone here and there because I like her and we are friends. But for her work she has to work for physical praise.
On the behavior side of things we started working hard on Leave It today, both for begging and for going for food dropped on the floor. My 2-year-old human child decided to destroy the house with trail mix this afternoon and so we had lots of temptation for Hazel to pick food up off the ground. She only managed to snag one peanut and that was fairly early in the exercise. She caught on quickly but we did have to watch her carefully for sneaking.
Tomorrow her remote trainer should arrive and so we are going to take her Come command to a new level as we introduce the collar. She is a soft girl so we are going to be careful not to scare her or overwhelm her with the remote collar. I will speak more on how we use a remote collar for sensitive dogs as we go further with Hazel.
For now Hazel is pretending to murder one of her toys as Kylie the Akita watches with mild interest (Kylie is far too dignified to play with the boarders but she enjoys watching).
We also worked on the Come command more heavily today and she is slowly improving. She really drags her feet with this command. She is getting small corrections if she stops entirely before getting to me but we are mostly working with happy voice encouragement at this point.
Hazel is way too treat motivated at the moment so we are not using any food at all during her training. She gets food at meal times and a milk bone here and there because I like her and we are friends. But for her work she has to work for physical praise.
On the behavior side of things we started working hard on Leave It today, both for begging and for going for food dropped on the floor. My 2-year-old human child decided to destroy the house with trail mix this afternoon and so we had lots of temptation for Hazel to pick food up off the ground. She only managed to snag one peanut and that was fairly early in the exercise. She caught on quickly but we did have to watch her carefully for sneaking.
Tomorrow her remote trainer should arrive and so we are going to take her Come command to a new level as we introduce the collar. She is a soft girl so we are going to be careful not to scare her or overwhelm her with the remote collar. I will speak more on how we use a remote collar for sensitive dogs as we go further with Hazel.
For now Hazel is pretending to murder one of her toys as Kylie the Akita watches with mild interest (Kylie is far too dignified to play with the boarders but she enjoys watching).
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