Paw Pods and Dumbbells

I feel like I haven't done a training post of any sort in a really long time.  Probably because I haven't!  I have taken some periodic video of the dogs during training sessions, but between Miley going into season, me getting really busy, and then Heff, I haven't spent any time putting anything together.  So I grabbed some video of a couple exercises that we were playing around with in March and put them together!  It was a little difficult watching Heffner, but also good to "see" him.

The first video is when I was playing around with Miley and the obedience glove.  We were just starting to work with it and I was getting her used to just taking it from my hand before we were doing anything off the ground.  Because I always worked Heffner in on whatever we were doing, but modified it, he got to work with his favorite dumbbell, the plastic one.  Then I decided to just throw in the leather article just because.

The next video is of me working them on the paw pods.  Because I didn't video their training sessions from the very first time they were introduced to them, I showed how I generally progress through working up to all four paw pods.  First I start with only two and get them to target with their front feet.  Once they've got that down, I have them walk over the paw pods so that they acknowledge that they're there and I start having them target with their rear feet.  I pretty much always warm them up this way before moving on to all four pods.  Once they're comfortably targeting front and rear with only two pods, then I put all four down.  I still start them at the back and have them walk forward.  I haven't actually tried having them only start on the front ones and figure it out.  I may try that with Miley tonight.  Particularly with Heffner being 9 at the time, I wanted him to be very cognizant of where the equipment was and mindful of what he was doing with all four feet.

In the description beneath video on YouTube I explain why the clips I used for the dogs are from different sessions.  Heffner's clip is from the second session and Miley's is from the first.  When I did the first recording, I didn't check to make sure that I had the camera positioned to always have the dog in the frame, so parts of the dogs were cut off.  I redid the recording session to get a better view of the dogs, but when I did, Miley was just about to go into season (I didn't know it at the time) and she was starting to act REALLY weird for her.  She was getting really weirded out by the sliding glass door that I normally had her in a down stay near and she broke her stay several times during Heffner's session.  And in general, she was just very unfocused and not her normal self during her training session, so I opted for using the first recording of her even though she's not always in frame.  It's a better demonstration of her skill set than the one of her in hormonal brain mode.

I am going to make a conscious effort to do more recording of our training sessions and put more videos together for the blog!