August’s training challege is for me to train with the dogs (specifically Twist, Raven and Rogue), in 4 different locations this month and keep a record of how they reacted in each place. So…here’s our first update.
I didn’t really plan on including Friday in this challenge since I only had Twist and Rogue with me, but I think I’ll write down what we did anyway. I’m going to be as specific as I can about what was going on around us and different things that might have had an impact on how well the dogs responded in the new situation.
Time of Day: We didn’t actually get to the park to meet with our obedience trainer till probably close to 8:30 pm. I don’t think that this would be a time that I would normally choose as optimal for me or the dogs, but it’s what we had to work with on Friday.
Who was there: Cynthia, Levi and our Obedience instructor and Twist and Rogue.
Where we trained: The was a public park. There was a stage pretty close by where we set up to train, and it seemed like they were practicing for a play of some kind. They had music and people speaking into microphones and people sitting in front of the stage as an audience. There weren’t a lot of people walking around, probably because of the time of day, but the crowd by the stage was a pretty big distraction. I only noticed one other dog in the park as we were training with Twist, but it was walking with it’s owner and on a leash. Twist didn’t even seem to see it.
What we worked on: Twist: We walked around the park a bit before we did any training just to let him get an idea of where we were. Then once we had settled in a bit, our obedience instructor called a basic heeling pattern for us on leash and then off leash. He did well, except for his about turns were really wide. I was pretty happy with his focus in general though considering the level of distractions. We also did a couple of recalls, he paused on his first one and I had to give a second command. The next time he did fine. He did a very nice stand for exam, no problems there. We worked for a few minutes on his dumbell retrieve too. It’s coming along nicely. Rogue: I figured she had alot to process just going to a new vet and having a chiropractic adjustment for the first time, besides the fact that it was almost dark by the time we got done training with Twist. There were lights, but they were throwing funky shadows everywhere, so I just took her out and walked her around for a few minutes. She seemed to be doing fine, so then I asked for simple targeting to a lid. The last thing we did was walk in a group with Cynthia, her husband, our obedience instructor and Levi. The purpose was to see if we could get her to walk comfortably between me and another person. She struggled with this…I think part of it was that she was unsure to begin with and then couldn’t see well with the lighting as it was. Considering those two things, she didn’t do too bad. I would like to try it again during the day and see if she doesn’t have any easier time with it.