I really liked Diana's exercise in her blog where she had both Java and Miley work on coming out of and going into tunnels combined with turns. One thing about Lexi is that she sucks to tunnels, and loves blasting out. I thought it would be fun (and good practice!) to work on driving ahead, and paying attention.
I tend to love any exercise that can be turned into an "either/or" scenario!
You'll see that at about 1 minute I come to the epiphany that if I have to direct Lexi off of a straight line, I better find a way to get there (a shortcut--whether it's cutting corners, leaving her on a contact, etc...) or I can't give her information.
You look really good. The only thing I might change is how you reward Lexi. (I could be way wrong, this is just my opinion). So when she is driving toward you, but you are done with the sequence, I would reward her at your side first with the toy then throw the toy afterwards. Because I think that it give confusing cues. Stopping or slowing down is a deceleration cue and with stopping your dog should come to you. But if you throw the toy off then the dog learns to not listen to that deceleration cue.( i hope this makes sense). I may throw the toy forward, if Im running a line and want to send my dog on and tell her go on. But if she is coming out of a tunnel and I want her to listen to me or come in, I will reward at my side. So it can be confusing to your dog on what she is suppose to do. I know you run your dog much better that I run my dog so I hope you arent offended by this.
ReplyDeleteDiana you are absolutely right! I noticed the same thing when I pulled this video off the camera. It was a good example of lazy handling giving bad information.
DeleteAnd no need to apologize, I value your insight! You know more about this than me (and, I definitely don't run my dogs better than you!!!)