The weather in Utah sure is cooling off. We went from 90's to 50's pretty much overnight. This past week has dumped buckets of rain and Boots is just happy it's sunny today! The crazy weather combined with an unfortunate head cold on my part, made for a less-than-ideal week but we still accomplished good things.
This week we worked on the following...
Lesson 3.16 "FIX" (This tells your puppy to pick up his leg and let the leash out if he's accidentally stepped over it. Whenever the leash gets stuck under my puppy's leg I can say, "Fix," and my puppy will lift his front leg to untangle the leash without me having to bend over and do it. We started this behavior but it still needs lots of work.)
Lesson 3.17 "GET YOUR LEASH" (Just like it sounds, this cue tells my puppy to bring me his leash. It's a little tricky to teach especially after focusing on not mouthing the leash for so many of the initial weeks - guess I could have reversed that haha! - but it is a nice one to have in your bag of tricks. Sometimes I accidentally drop the leash while out and about. This cue tells Boots to pick it up and bring it back to me. See the video of Boots starting this behavior below. We are off to a good start but clearly there's more to be done. Hopefully you can benefit from seeing how a behavior starts and recognize this is not something taught in one session.)
This week we plan on focusing on the following:
Lesson 3.16 "FIX" (continued.)
Lesson 3.17 "GET YOUR LEASH" (continued.)
Lesson 2.14 "SAY HI" (This cue tells your puppy they can walk up to a person for greeting. Boots does very well at sitting to be greeted so this week we will add the cue instructing him when he can approach a person. The hard part of this one is getting the puppy to learn sometimes he doesn't get to say hi - only when instructed to do so. I can see this being the challenge for Boots because he LOVES people!)
As for field trips, we are going to more STORES! Today we visited Lowe's practicing loose leash walking, sit, down, let's go, better hurry and manners around people. Boots helped me pick out furnace filters and then we were on our way. Remember to keep outings short and positive. We don't want to overwhelm our puppies but rather show them the world is such a great place to be.
Last Wednesday we finished a six-week Canine Coaching series "TRAINING 101" which is an online puppy class for members. All six videos have now been posted on the Canine Coaching page for those of you who want to view them. There are new October classes listed as of today - be sure to check them out! I'd love to see you in class!
As always, if you have any comments or questions, please contact us online at BAXTER & Bella and we look forward to seeing you soon!
Happy Training,
Amy