The first meeting point shares a parking lot with the fenced off dog park. I am not a fan of dog parks and, in general, keep my dogs out of them. I do, however, regularly use them to work outside the fence on focus, etc. with my dogs. I have found no better place to proof stays with other dogs playing and growling and barking. I wasn't sure how Tali would react to the environment, but she was a little champ. All I asked for was focus and position in the RZ, the hardest part was getting her distracted, not keeping her focus! She sat beautifully in heel position not three feet from the fence with a Basset Hound barking at her... not even a flinch.
Since the focus was going well I threw in a couple quick Sit-Stays. I asked for a few repetitions of a formal Sit-Stay (me moving out to directly in front, release coming from heel position) varying from 2 to 15 seconds. Stays/Waits have been a struggle for us, but she did beautifully today! I look forward to Susan Garrett's Crate Games arriving in my mailbox to hopefully help us with our Stays/Waits.
As we finished up working there were two dogs in the dog park that were of great energy, calm, fun, relaxed so I decided to try letting Tali go play. She has a bit of a tendency to be bossy, so I wanted to make sure she was exposed to other confident dogs. She was very well-behaved, initiating play, appropriate sniffing and checking back in with me, even offering some focus in RZ. I was very pleased with her social skills. After about ten minutes we left, making sure it was a very positive experience.
We then took a journey to PetSmart. After some great patience and focus at the doors in we went. We encountered a snarly, vicious toy mix of sorts in one aisle. I'll never understand why people with unfriendly dogs insist on bringing them to public, dog-friendly places, but that's another post for another day. Tali reacted perfectly to the snarly little beast, looking at it, not reacting and deferring to me. In the past snarly dogs would send her running (flight response), but now she has the confidence to stay where she is and defer to me. I was very pleased. She did a beautiful quick heeling pattern in the toy aisle, and a quick Sit-Stay in the treat aisle (with a big stinky bone beside her). I would like to work recalls in that environment, so I'll have to drag a friend along next time so I can do some restrained recalls to make sure she shows lots of drive and value in coming to me.
I did discover that the sounds and movements of shopping carts was scary for Tali, so I will have to do some more work around loud metallic noises and banging shopping carts. I did get her taking treats off a stationary cart as we left, but she was clearly still unsure.
We then headed to our rendezvous point for the Relay, handed off the medal bearers dog and moved to the end of their portion of the route. I took Tali out and walked her along the path, she was very interested in the loud music, the police escort sirens, the crowd of people, but stayed responsive to me and wasn't phased by the strange noises. I, again, was pleased with her confidence.
We also took a quick detour to take some pictures of Tali at Hillcrest Park. It was a little windy!
To finish the day off I decided to lay a quick track for Tali at a baseball field. There were several old tracks of people and other dogs there, but nothing to take this girl off her track! I laid about a 50 pace track with a 45 degree corner. This was our first corner, but she didn't miss a beat. The corner was heavily baited, but the rest of the track was probably 60/40 no bait/bait. She is starting to pull into the harness very nicely and is staying very dedicated to the track. I just have to make sure she doesn't speed up to much in the un-baited portions as she races to the next bait. Steady and sure is what I'm trying to achieve on the track.
Overall, it was a good adventure and I should have a VERY tired Tali tonight!
No comments:
Post a Comment