Pushing Boundaries

Nobody's actually pushing boundaries. Well, not in any specific way. I guess my dogs are always kind of pushing boundaries. But it seemed like a catchy title for a follow-up boundary training post.

Tried the free-shaping "broom on the floor" method with Jun again last night. No luck. So I worked on my height barrier idea. I brought her into a bedroom where I could completely block the boundary and set up two yardsticks in an X across the doorway. Not a solid barrier, by any means, but a pretty obvious one. This seemed to work a bit better, but I guess she was kind of pushing the boundary as she had a tendency to want to LEAN on the barrier. I had to make sure my criteria was "not touching the barrier at all" but even so, she got as close as she possibly could without touching. I'm not sure if this was the right thing to do, but when I released her to cross the barrier, I didn't take it down first, I asked her to jump over it. I want her to realize that she is physically capable of crossing the boundary, but choose not to. So, I guess it went okay, but she still wants to get as close as she possibly can to crossing the line, just like when we were working it without a physical barrier, she always had to have her front foot JUST across the line.

Her stays have been so good lately, I'm not sure what her hang-up is here, but she's really just not getting the concept. I always know with Jun that if she's taking longer than a couple sessions to at least start to catch on to something, that I need to find a new way to communicate the idea to her. Once she "gets" it, she always wants to do it right and very rarely tries to half-ass anything.

In Dexter news, on the advice of a friend, I left him in his crate all night last night. I expected to wake up and have some major cleaning to do, but he slept all night, no whining, and no accidents! Since he had been peeing at least twice a night and usually pooping once, I had figured he wasn't capable of holding it that long, but I guess he is.

And in other Jun news, Andrew you will be so proud of me. With Jun's RLV, I didn't even give her the chance to screw it up again. I backed up, started from the very beginning and worked the whole process again. And I will do that every time until I KNOW she'll get it right on the first try. I'm betting we'll have a RLV by pet expo!!