Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Reactivity work

We've started doing scent discrimination with metal canning rings, and Cai is correct 90% of the time with 3-4 articles. I'm honestly impressed, haha! Now to proof the exercise, then add leathers. With Dragon I also worked plastics, in the form of pens and pill bottles. He was 100% correct in scent discrimination!

This morning we hiked in Redwood Regional Park. I had Cai on a ten foot line to work on his reactivity (it allows me to stop him from rushing toward people or dogs if he goes over threshold, and more effectively interrupt and redirect him). There's still a lot of work to be done, but it feels like we're over the hump. It's getting easier to redirect his focus on to me and reward him for being calm. The tone of his bark and body language are steadily changing from alarm to frustrated greeting, which I see as progress. I'd rather be dealing with a patience/impulse control issue than a fear issue!

In the afternoon I drove to a nearby bakery and we sat outside on a bench as I ate a scone (delicious raspberry-walnut scone, mmm!). He barked at a giant stroller heading right for us, but otherwise hung out calmly. We walked to the ATM and he got lots of attention from the ladies. He's so handsome!

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