Some videos of Laddie's training Dec 29th evening (click on the underlined links to view): Training run 1 Training run 2 Not perfect- both of us made some mistakes...
Laddie has been absolutely spot on with sitting until the past 24 hours. But once I added the down verbal command (as opposed to the down lure), he began to struggle a bit b/c with the down verbal command I also look down at the floor to indicate where I want him to go. However, I also have to look down at him a bit for any of his commands just because he's smaller than me, so it's confusing him briefly until he learns to differentiate the different angles to my body language and the directed focus of my eyes. As a bridge move, I've started to add a finger pointing towards the ground when I ask him to down to help him see the difference. Even by the 2nd training run, he'd started to sort that out.
In the first video he headed directly into his crate with no hesitation, which is typical. By the time we got to the second run, he was getting tired and didn't go in so easily. Laddie rolling over, up on & tug :)
With the tug, I usually stroke and pat his head and body to get him used to being handled while tugging, but I forgot to do that this time. And I said 'yes' instead of 'out' once. But he's an easy goin' type of feller, so rolled with it :) Laddie's progress learning to pull on the cupboard door. Second training episode with this activity; it's a fairly complex process. He's doing well :)
Then I forgot to get him to do the 'place' command, but to be fair he was getting pretty tired and it was time to quit anyway. Today (Dec 30th, we're working on 'stand'. More on that later.)
Of course, there's lots of proofing that needs to be done with distractions, etc, and I'll need to reduce and wean off the treats as he solidifies these commands. However, he's not even 11 weeks old in these videos and his ability to maintain his focus for this length of time and retain so many commands so quickly is impressive. I should also mention that he just arrived in the evening a week ago after 3 days of travel from the States, so these videos are with 6 days of training on him. Amazes me every day!
Love this boy!
And then there's this video of Laddie playing with a bottle earlier in the day, just for fun :) He went into his crate and fell asleep immediately after these! Best way to tucker out a pup who can't go outside longer than quick potty trips b/c he's from New Jersey and not acclimatized yet to our -37°C weather!
