Reply To: Shannon & Cricket (DRTDT)

[Alana McGee]

Thanks for the feedback! I also thought she seemed to be enjoying herself more, I love watching her have fun.

So we did the truffle toss exercise today, and as you can see we got a little snow (started yesterday). I think the snow was excellent – the tea ball really skittered around and buried itself as Cricket knocked it about. I saw the video you guys posted on Facebook with Callie pinpointing the truffle and I think we got a bit of a start doing that here.

She does have a good retrieve with her ball and frisbee, but I didn’t ask for that here – I was thinking that just rewarding at source was ok – thoughts?

So, I started off by going to the area I initially identified with the medium grass. Well, it is quite a steep hill and even though we don’t have ice, the snow is so water logged that I was sliding everywhere. After ~10min I decided we could accomplish the same thing in the backyard. I’ve included two tosses here, but I should really do a blooper reel of me falling all over the hill. I was super impressed by Cricket’s ability to get into the game here – is is a relatively quiet place but still TONS of detractions – she did really well. Note – when I say “This is terrible” I am referring to the conditions, not Cricket 🙂

We came home and worked in the snow in the backyard. With better footing we were able to have more fun with the frisbee. I’ve shown two tosses here where we had to look for the truffle together, I didn’t want her to become disengaged from the game so I tried to help her a tiny bit (in both cases I could see the target). I think as we play this more I’ll help less and less to help build persistence (?) – thoughts.

Overall, I think this went well. Watching the video I noted I was asking her to find it – which is not a cue I use for truffle hunting, and I was repeating cues for her to “show me”. I need to be careful with my cues! With the forecasted temperatures, the snow should melt this week so we can try in grass.

What do you guys think we should work on the most for this last week of class (I can’t believe we are at the end of another 6 weeks!)? I was thinking a round of blind hides inside, simple one target hides outside – maybe covering the tea ball with some leaves, and more ‘fetch the truffle’ games. I don’t think we are quite ready to bury hides (?), but I am wondering whether we’ll be able to do that with the ground frozen – maybe it will just take a little more elbow grease. What skills would you like to see me video?

This time change also hinders us a bit. It means it is dark by the time I get home from work now – so I’ll need to be creative in our outdoor practice time 🙂