Reply To: Shannon & Cricket (DRTDT)

[Alana McGee]

We’ve been doing lots of practice. Simple hides outside and even one with the tea ball mostly covered in a pile of leaves. Cricket has been doing really well with that.

Last night we did blind hides inside – Wade hid three hot targets. I’m going to post the first of the two rounds we did because I see [u][b]many[/b][/u] places where I can improve.

The lesson on precision alerts was on my mind when we were practicing last night, and that was my downfall in this case. I was waiting for Cricket to do more in her alerts, but I think because there were multiple targets this made her confused as she thought she wasn’t on the right source.

When Cricket is really sure of a source she offers both nose touches, a look at me, and paw touches. Since she often nose touches things I thought I’d wait for the paw touches. That was a mistake – when I review the video she is clearly alerting and showing me the targets and I am not supporting her -crap. She actually alerts on all three targets in the first 50 seconds of the video and I did nothing. I was trying to do too many things at once: multiple targets, blind hides, and trying to build a stronger alert chain – bad bad human.

I realized my error around the 1 minute mark and really try to support her more quickly going forward from there.

Our second round I just focused on letting her show me with a nose touch and look. As long as I ask her “did you find it” as soon as she looks at me she stays at source.

So, today I am going to practice precision alerts with only a single target. I’ll watch the lesson videos again and give it a try. I’m hoping to get something a bit stronger from her in terms of her alert. I’ll work inside for now, and then we’ll move it outside.

It is also snowing like mad here again so we’ll probably do some more practice tossing the tea ball outside in the snow in the next few days. Winter is finally here, a month later than last year, but still too early for me 🙂