Tuesday, January 3, 2012

January Goals

I am feeling a little bit uninspired again lately, and I am thinking it might be a good idea to do monthly goals. So Here are January's:

At the end of the month Elo will have the opportunity to test for his C.L.A.S.S. BA, so we should probably brush up on some of the necessary skills. Elo's boundary cue is good, but we have never worked on threshold manners outside the house, so waiting at the door will be one we need to work on. (Actually, the out-of-the-house part is going to be the biggest challenge for all of it, since being highly reactive Elo rarely gets the chance to work in public!) The recall will be no problem, but we have not worked on sitting for leashing up, so we will need to work that skill. The meet and greet will be another one we need to practice. Elo has never learned to sit for greeting. I don't expect it to be a problem, just something I will need to teach him. The rest of the items we should have down pretty well, but we will practice them just to be sure. Jun is not ready for the "stranger" part of the test yet, but I may practice some of these things with her anyway.

My other goals for Elo this month will be: 1) get his back up on cue and work it in front, heel and side. 2) finish his cross paws trick, and 3) work on his nails 5 days a week.

Jun will work on her scent articles and directed retrieves. And a trick. I just have to decide which one.

For both dogs, I want to work on body handling. Neither is particularly uncomfortable with body handling, but I'd like to get them both to where they can lie quietly on their side or stand still and accept all types of handling. I got a clipper for Christmas for the mats that Jun's fur tends to get, and I'd like her to be able to stand or lie nicely while I clip them out. We'll see how that goes!

3 comments:

  1. Huh, I don't know my other comment disappeared!

    Lance lies like that all the time so I'm hoping to capture it/ try and shape it. but I suck at capturing so we'll see.

    The other 2 never offer it. With Fiona it has worked really well to have her on the hardwood floors and lay her front half on a big pillow. Then moving the treat forward works well. I've been able to shrink the pillow and she offered it for the first time without a pillow yesterday while training. But only twice.

    Vito I'm stuck. He's really good at crawling so the treat moving forward doesn't work so much. The pillow he's amazingly good at planting his back feet while I lure forward. We're getting more of a standing stretch with back legs than a down frog.

    I tried the pillow with Lance and he's insisting on getting all 4 feet on it. But we'll keep playing. I'm not sure how I'll end up teaching it yet with lance and vito :)

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  2. I like the balance trick with the treat! But I've never managed to get the catch a treat portion of the trick...

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  3. I am not going to worry about the catch. I'm not sure how to teach that part. I will just release to eat it. If she ends up catching it, cool. If not, maybe we'll work on that later. I just want a trick I can actually finish!!

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