Whistle Sit

For the first time in his life, Laddie, who like our other Goldens usually sleeps in our bedroom, slept thru the night without waking me to go out. I was concerned that that might indicate he was especially tired from the activity of recent days, or perhaps that he was under the weather. Since both Lumi and Laddie have had ample group work the last couple of weeks and will probably continue to do so, I decided it prudent to skip training with the Field Trial group today.

Once we got up, Laddie seemed his usual bouncy self, so in the morning I took the three Goldens for a hike while Renee was working (she's a fitness trainer and gives classes at a club on Sunday mornings as well as other times during the week). Bringing Gabriel along was intended to let him have fun participating in the outing, but for various reasons it didn't work out well and I probably won't try that without Renee again.

Every five minutes or so, I blew a whistle sit for Lumi and Laddie (Gabriel hasn't been trained to sit on a whistle). Today, I only needed a second whistle to get the dogs to sit twice. The improvement from yesterday was the result of both a slight improvement in the dogs' responsiveness to the whistle when it's interrupting other activities, and also an improvement in my ability to reserve the whistles for situations in which both dogs are likely to respond correctly. In the days to come, as their responsiveness and my confidence increase, I'll gradually raise criteria, both distance and degree of distraction.