Review of Basic Training: Wally Goes Back to the Basics

Having learned my lesson from before, I revisited our earlier/basic training today. I didn't want to lose behaviors again like before so we worked on formal retrieving a lot outside (and will do some more before bedtime) and a lot of drops, some beginning shaping, and targeting indoors - though we did some drops outside too. Since this is review, we moved pretty quick from one thing to the next to help keep him excited and to work it in with the performing while excited as well.

One thing that made it interesting for targeting is that I only took nose touches since those can be really useful for a lot of the things we're working on at the moment. I may end up coming up with two separate targeting cues to help him keep the difference between paw and nose touches more easily instead of him trying to guess. Using "push" for nose touches might do half the work already since that's already connected to using his nose (to push a ball). I think I'll "revive" the cue 'paw' for paw touches (Yeah, I know, so very creative), and that should take care of that. Should.

Fortunately, Wally isn't one of those dogs that tends to get bored of things, so reviewing is easy with him. I think it also helps that he's severely food motivated (almost unnaturally so!) and that helps keep him going and excited and alert. Also with the rewarding, I throw in some jumping up on me and let him bounce around between exercises (which he just enjoys for whatever reason), also keeping his spirits up and him wanting more.

I think I'll make Thursday "Back to the Basics" day, or at least "A Day of Review". Nothing totally new gets introduced, but old stuff we've done before gets "revived" to help keep it fresh in the mind. Not sure what we'll do tomorrow. The weather is going to be going downhill overnight and be a rainy, somewhat chilly day. Wally won't too much care, but I'm not going to be too motivated to do any outside work. Too bad a click and treat won't have the same effect as it does for him! We'll figure out something to do.