Wally vs Me: Day 1 - Abres/Cierras

As planned, we could get the first of these "competitions" in and we did it as the schedule said with opening and closing doors - Abres and Cierras.

Here's the scorecard:

Wally wins the first event 29-9

Wally pretty much beat the challenge pretty handily, though I have heard that if the dog doesn't perform at 80% or higher, there's still work to do. In that case, we need more work on this. I wouldn't disagree with that as I also want Wally to do something well at least eight times in ten. Preferably eleven times in ten.

Looking at how this went, there was some bit of a...I guess "lull" in the beginning where he must needed to warm up or something. Perhaps it's getting his mind "in the right attitude", so to speak, to begin thinking about instructions. That's something I noticed right off the bat, which is a lot of the point of this whole idea at the end of the day (that and fun interaction with him, of course!).

There was also one specific context that really, really gave him problems and is where I got most of my points (and lemon cake). That context was when the basement door wasn't just barely opened, but wasn't all the way opened. This totally confused him. Like, completely. He would try to go down the stairs or close the door, it was difficult for him to get things down. Mental note made - there's one place we need to really work.

Continuing on, he struggled a bit around the bathroom door. In this case, it was mostly an orientation issue. At the basement door, he is heading in from the door's left. The bathroom is the exact opposite, he has to come in from the right. This confused him initially, but he started to work it out, though somewhat tentatively. So there's another context we could stand to work on. Approaching the door from the right.

After that, there wasn't much problem. Upstairs, he had to push the door open with his nose. No problem as he has to do that to open the basement door from the inside (as in after coming up the stairs from the basement). What impressed me was that he did the "cierras" from inside the room and I'm still on the other side. Even more so is that he did the "abres" just as easily from the same place. In fact, once he did the "cierras" and then "caught" the door on his nose before the door closed to open it back up, likely because the rewards were outside the room, but regardless, he solved the problem on his own.

We did a few with me in the bathroom and him pushing the door open as well (probably not the best thing to show him, in retrospect!) and he did it without problem. 

After that, I was out of cake, so that was the end the session. Wally had tons of fun doing his "dog laughing" and almost literally FLYING down the stairs (no idea why...), I mean, he literally like just sort of slid/jumped/something down the last four stairs.

Looks like Wally did a very good job, and had a lot of fun. All and all a good day.