Paw Pods

Dominic is working his way through his Halloween attire.  The coat is more than a little big.  I made it for Heffner as one of my first attempts at making less expensive, holiday themed dog coats.  I was going for a longer cut on Heff and it was even a bit big on him.  So Dom basically has a Halloween themed cape.  It works.

I can't believe I'm able to say this, but I've been keeping up with a regular training schedule.  It's the weirdest damn thing.  It does involve protecting that time on a week night.  And I have implemented some things to help get me better organized.  Things like this awesome dry erase wall sticker!  I'm better organized when I have notes that I can look at as to what my game plan for training is that day.  I put the sticker up on the side of my kitchen cabinets facing into the area of the house that I usually train in, so it's very easy for me to glance up and remind myself of what the goal and exercise is.  I'm a fan.

I'm also toying with trying out a training challenge at the end of the month.  I just need to get a little more organized to ensure that I'll be able to accomplish it all and not overload myself.  When I write out a plan, I'm finding that it's helping knock down the feeling of being overwhelmed.  At least a little. 

And I'm happy to say that I actually have a training video!  I got Dom up on all four paw pods.  I'm mostly sure that I haven't used the paw pods with him and really sure that I haven't had him do all four paw pods.  He does have a lengthy reinforcement history for putting his front feet on things, which helps a lot in training this.  And I've also worked with him on rear foot targeting, though he doesn't have the depth of history with that as the front feet.

I did decide to use the flatter disc as an intermediate step prior to introducing the rear foot pods.  Dominic's confidence has been a little lower with Miley's passing and I want to really make sure that I set him up for success.  Plus, it's not like I have a deadline of when I need to have this behavior "finished" by, so why not break it down a little more?

In the process of looking back through old videos to see if I have anything of Dom on the paw pods (I didn't), I did find this video of Miley and Heff. 

That, made me very nostalgic.