Reply To: Annie & Ashley

[Alana McGee]

Wonderful!

I will keep going as planned and add maybe add a tin or two. Bill made be a bundle of them. 🙂

I did a new place hide in a small area out front 4 hidden, 2 buried. She found all except 1 buried. We quit
when we were ahead. I was having concerns about her alerts, so I set this up to really be able to observe
her alerts and all is fine. It appears that a difficult area can lower her alert and I will just adjust for that.

Her alerts are consistent when she is confident:
If there is too much plant in the way, Ashley will paw at it.
If there is a little bit of plant, she will do the play pose.
If she can easily get to the tin, full down.

I just realized, she gently dug out the buried tin this time gave a great down alert and did not go into crazy, fun digging time!

So I’m really happy with where we are – she did great in a new area with strong alerts intact.

Now hopefully we get some rain tomorrow and I can see if rain is a concern.

We have another new place searched planned for this evening and we will continue proofing with indoor and outdoor simple hides.

I was a good check for me that she is doing fine. She just seemed to be a bit tired that day. She’s still growing and learning so much. I really focus on making sure she is having fun. Even in classes, when I can tell she needs a break, we will go to the side and play a game of tug or just let her walk and sniff. I even changed a class, because the mix of dogs and training style was just too overwhelming for her and she was very stressed. It’s my job to make sure she feels safe and is having fun. Ashley does let us know when she is not feeling ok about something.

We ‘play’ so many learning games right now, basic obedience, focus games and mushrooming and she is still just a little baby. She was learning how to ‘take it’ last night with a new item: a little halloween basket. I really love how when we are trying something new, she really tries all kinds of nose touches, paw touches and downs to see if that’s the right answer. She really wants to play and please.

Now I need to bake & start smoking some high value treats for our seminar this weekend!
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