Saturday, August 13, 2011

Second day of On/off drill at Gaby's

I felt I had seen a good trend working on Laddie's nerves/yelping with our On/off drill at Gaby's farm yesterday.

Today we returned to the same location to run the drill again, after crashing at today's trial.  I expected a little back-sliding, but hoped for the same positive trend.  Instead, Laddie was back at Square One on the point-crossing line, and began having increasing difficulty with the bypassing line.

I concluded from his behavior that this was not nervousness but rather that he was not enjoying it.  Boredom, perhaps.

Anyway, I stopped the session and went to chat with Gaby.  Among other topics was Trouble, her good-looking and wonderfully affectionate new 4mo Chessie, whom Laddie seemed to be having fun playing with there in the kitchen.

After a couple of hours, I wanted to head for home, but I had an idea and asked if Gaby would be willing to come out with one or more of her dogs to watch Laddie run the On/off drill.  I speculated that having a human and canine audience might perk up his motivation.  She grabbed the puppy and we headed for the pond.

Sure enough, Laddie ran both blinds perfectly: no veering, no yelping, no popping.  As a bonus, Gaby threw a few long water marks for Laddie, surely more fun for him than all those blinds.

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