Reply To: Shannon & Cricket (DRTDT)

[Alana McGee]

***I can’t seem to delete anything in this post, I’ll need to make a new one but you can disregard my question about the tea balls***

As always, thanks for the great feedback! I am pretty new at dog training in general and am learning a ton!

We tried two hides this morning, each with two targets. I tried the priming routine between hides. In the first search it looked a lot like my previous video (I actually manufactured success and called it quits), but the second hide I brought her almost the entire way to the exit after the first hide and did the priming there and sent her off to search and it went better! She needs a nap, and then I will try again.

The ball reward – I’d love to use the ball for every hide, and I will start using the ball in the priming exercise. Right now, Cricket seems to have a hard time transitioning from the ball to any type of work and back again (ball has always been a super fun play thing), I am working on using it as a reward for behaviours she knows really well, so for right now I think I’ll just use it at the end of our searches. Is this ok? I am working on teaching her to put her ball away as recommended earlier.

Question about your feedback – you ask if we can use tea balls, and yes I can get some more. But, should I be hiding them or putting them in the open?

I have video of our searches this morning, but I’d like to try the tea ball thing this afternoon and post that video for you to see as well.