PuppyLog

Stats:

age: 28 weeks and a couple of days
weight: 32 pounds

It snowed again! She loves it. She follows Ipo around and he plays with her in the snow.

Agility

We havent been doing agility for the past month. I wasn't feeling well and now the weather makes it difficult. We will probably wait till the winter weather is over before starting up again.

Last we left it, Lila was able to follow me to the various apparatus, go away from me to them if it wasn't too far away, and go to some off them on command, again if it wasn't too far away.

She know and responded well to the verbal commands for the tunnel (through), the dog walk (walk), the tire jump (hoop), the A-frame (scramble), and to a limited extent, regular jumps (jump).

She has made a good begining on the weave poles (no command yet). She will enter them from the correct side and weave, but she will often weave only every other pole. She also moves quite slowly on this pice of equipment. I have not used the traditional training method to teach her the weave poles but once she understands exactly what is wanted I may resort to running her through the offset poles in order to build up her speed.

She understands the see-saw and will run up to the pivot point then slow down and be cautious while it tilts. She will occasionly do the see-saw on her own (that is, when I give her free time to do what she wants) but doesn't seem to really like it. She is still a bit nervous about it.

She loves the A-frame and will climb it on her own but like to sit on top and look around.

Other training

Loose-leash walking

We are working on loose-leash walking as she has started pulling again. She is pretty good but having difficulty getting any better. She wants to pull at the beging off a walk, as we approach the park, and to meet other dogs.

Sit and down with eye movements 

I am starting to teach her to sit and lie down using eye movements. I need to say her name so whe looks at me but can now get her to sit by looking from her face to her butt. I can get her to lie down by looking from her face to the ground in front of her. She does not yet understand getting up into a sit from lying down. I think there is something wrong with my eye movements for this. I need to think about it more.

After the sit and down are pretty solid I want to teach her to come to my side and sit down using only eye movements.

Soccer training

The soccer ball may turn out to be the best tool for advanced training for Lila. It works at a number of levels at the same time. The ball acts as a reward. Since she likes nothing better than hearding it I need reward her with nothing else other than kicking it or letting her chase it around on her own. The ball acts as a distraction for distraction training. She doesn't like to look at or pay any attention to anything other than the ball when it is in view. The ball acts as an object of training. After she is solid on other things we are working on, we will start working on having her herd the ball to particular places (mainly to me). The ball acts as excersize equipment. The ball increases drive and focus. She can work on learning things with the ball for much longer than I can keep focused. She never gets bored with it.