(Friday, 2 May 08)
Kaylee’s previous training is mostly oriented towards house manners and the conformation ring (and attendent grooming), so while she’s a very POLITE dog, basic obedience isn’t really her strong suit, and I’m pretty much starting from scratch, although Bethany told me that she has previously been working on sit and down with a lure.
Spent a few minutes charging a clicker and then took a break to do some grooming. Once we finished that up, went back to playing with the clicker.
It’s not purely OC (Operant Conditioning), but I really prefer to lure sit and down, especially with adult dogs. We’ll work on getting her fully operant later. Did 15 reps of sit and stands interspersed (luring into the sit and then back into the stand), and then another set of sit-down. She’s fairly fluent with both behaviors and I phased out the treat so that I was just using the hand signal. The next step will be to get the hand signal phased over to an actual signal (that I can use further down the road in the the signals exercise- it’s just a more exaggerated version of the same movement) and add a verbal cue.
