Harder Pillow

Thursday 14th of March
Tracking and Bite work

Tracking
Plan:
Scent pad, wiggly track, about 40 paces, food in every foot step and Caesar yummy food in the end. Controlled start. Play with Kong after.

Training:
About 20 minutes old.
Dave laid a bent track (for Swedish readers - serpentin eller slangespår) with a small scent pad to start with then wiggling away for about 40 paces. Food in every foot step. A Caesar food, half open, in the end.

Controlled start. I lay the lead underneath her, between legs and I sit her down. She loves tracking and I start her by giving her the command "Varsågod". She knows exactly what the pole means and what the scent pad means, she left the scent pad for the track before she had eaten everything in the pad. That is good. Shows she is more interested in the track than the pad.

The wiggly track was very good for her, I could clearly see that she assumed the track would continue straight on. She did well, I must say. She is calm and happy and works her way to the end.

A couple of paces before the end she got the smell of the Caesar and wanted to go there with high nose. I stopped her and quite immediately she put her nose to the ground and sniffed the few steps that were left.

Analysing:

• Do not need scent pad any longer.
• Caesar food should be closed since the smell is too much at this stage.
• The ready made chicken tit bits I used are really good for tracking. Possibly slightly bigger pieces.
• Controlled start is very good for focus.
• Wiggly track is very good at this stage, gets her to concentrate on the track more.

Bite work
Plan:
Introduce harder pillow. Cap her concentration by laying down. Also try a few bark and launching in.

Training:
Mixed outcome really. I was so happy she bite the harder pillow like nothing. She had no problem with it what so ever. That was very good.

1. Cap - laying down and bite

We wanted her to cap her concentration and bite from there. We have seen from earlier trainings that she does that best from laying down. We want her to bite on Daves' movements.

I told her to lay down at first, she got too disturbed by that and did not bite well.
When she instead did it herself a few times she got the bites really nice, full and hard.
After that I could tell her to lay down and she got it right.
It was a little bit uneven. Sometimes she got it really good and sometimes not. After a while she had a consistency of good bites about 3-4 times in a row and we stopped there.

2. Barking first and then bite the pillow when Dave moves

My little polite girl thought it was a bit strange at first to bark at Dave to get him to play with the pillow.
However, she got the picture fairly quickly. We made it easy for her with just one bark and then bite. She tried to cheat a few times but I think she also got that after a while that it is not until Dave moves she can take the pillow. I just held her back when she tried to cheat.

Analysing:

• She gets more and more concentrated and her drive to bite the pillow becomes stronger the more we work with her. I did not expect anything else but you never know. I am happy about that.
• Need more training on the cap and full bite.
• Need more training on the bark and full bite.
• Next training will be on this pillow again (the harder one) and we will mix some barking and some capping then again.
• Next step will be an intermediate sleeve. Probably next week or the week after. I did buy one, Euro-Joe, but it is too fat and does not look anything like the full sleeve.
• Must buy a Gappay (spelling??) intermediate sleeve and return the other.