Monday, October 21, 2013

Downs Continued

We have had some progress in our downs at a distance. We have moved away from working on the stairs back to working on the flat.  I am now leaving Rundle in a stand stay, walking away and then asking for a down.  He is now downing on cue with little forward motion. Right now I am giving him a "learning phase" grace of a maximum of 2 steps forward. If he moves more than that, I reset and ask for the down again. Eventually I will want no forward movement at all after I give the cue, so I will shape our way towards that goal.
Since our goal in this exercise is for Rundle to be able to drop anywhere on cue, even if he is moving, I want him to learn how to drop out of motion. I am teaching this separate from the drop from a stand at a distance because he needs to understand the two concepts individually before I combine them. So, I am having Rundle drop while walking beside me to teach him that he can drop quickly on my cue while he is moving. I am posting a video that includes the first two sessions working on this. So far so good.  I will gradually keep moving when he drops and expect him to stay in the down position but I expect that will take several sessions of reinforcement to learn.


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