Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks

Since I have been back from Florida I have been focusing on teaching Bounder (9 1/2 years) and Chase (7 1/2 years) lots of new stuff.  They miss working and hate seeing me take Riot and Preston into the next room for training.  I decided to go back and teach them  all the foundation games that I have learned at Say Yes.  Our biggest focus has been teaching Susan”s nose target method for contacts but we have also been working lots of it’s yer choice and shaping new tricks.  I figure this will be good practise for my next dog and there’s not much else I can do inside. 

So every night for supper time all four dogs gather round and wait patiently on the couch for their turn at nose targets on the travel plank.  I have gone back and fixed Riot’s nose target and it is near perfect after these past two weeks.  In two weeks I have worked all my distractions and generalizing with Chase and we are just about ready to fade the target.  Bounder has taken a little longer as a foot target is the first thing she learned and getting rid of the foot movement has been a struggle.  Neither dog ever learned a hand target or the it’s yer choice game so the biggest struggle was to get them focused on the target rather than the food…Pavlov was definitely on their shoulder 🙂

Also since last week I have decided to try Chase and Bounder with running contacts.  Bounder has learned many different methods, none that I ever followed though with or could classify as independent and Chase has always had a 2 on 2off but they are very slow.  I figure if I can teach these old dogs an independent running dogwalk it will be easy for my border collie puppy (thats right!). 

With Preston I have been working on lots of proofing with the rnning dogwalk as I want it to be gamble proof if we see it at regionals or nationals this year.  Here is a quick video of a bunch of different challenges:

Classes are busy as ever and I am very excited for this trialing season as there will be lots of students who will be ready to start trialing.  I am even teaching three classes on Friday night for competition specific training.  We will be focusing lots on handling and strengthening the dogs understanding of driving lines and reading position and motion.  Also I am hoping to have two regional/national preparation groups starting in May so keep an eye out for the info on my website.