Session #1 March 1st

It's MARCH! And, that means, we get to start JUMPING!!!! Monday morning Gilley started her Foundation Training on a jump in our living room on carpet. With Developing Jumping Skills turned to page 9, we started at about 12" armed with a clicker and some tiny cubed bits of steak, and a handful of her kibble.

I had to lure her the first few times over the bar back and forth. She quickly caught on - seeing the clicker and treats were involved, and we had a new game going! She only once tried to "lift" ( Lifting her back rear leg is a game we played for some time with the clicker, so every time you get it out, she offers a leg lift... LOL). At first, she "bunny-hopped" a few, picking up all 4 feet off the ground at once and popped over. I moved the bar up a couple of inches, until she was creating more of an effort at 14", then inched our way up to 16" after about 8 repetitions. She got a little distracted and walked off a couple of times so it was a good reminder to find better ways to keep her in the game. I had to remember to encourage her and praise her more - after all, I was asking more of her, and this was supposed to be fun! She's going to like it if I make it a good experience for her, and she responded better when I remembered to praise her, tail wag and all :) Finally, Mom was catching on!

I am glad I read ALL of the exercise first before starting to know WHEN to click and WHERE to reward... and WHAT to look for from Gilley's execution. She busted through a couple of bars, trying to figure out a way to get to the other side for the treat, and she had some reps where her hiney hit the bar coming down where she didn't allow enough room to clear it, and she even went around the bar a few times. By the end of our 6 or 7 min. session, she was making a much better effort of raising her front end over the bar and lifting her rear over the bar. She had to "feel" it in 2 parts almost... there were reps where getting her front over the bar looked great but the back needed work, and vice-versa, but she quickly started to pull it together. I tried to make clearer to her what I wanted by tossing a piece of kibble for "ok" efforts, and saving the steak for "excellent!" efforts. I have to say, this speaks to my dog... she almost immediately corrected to repeating that which got her the greater reward. I think this is helpful to her in the infancy stages of "shaping" this new behavior.

I stopped with her expectantly awaiting more steak surprises, which gave me a chance to hop on e-mail to Granny and start asking away with a bunch of questions... this is important stuff, just wanted to get it right before moving on!!!

Later revelation: Watching her, you can see how important progressing to full jump height is to create the correct form - clicking such a complex behavior asks a lot of the dog to do this correctly on a low jump height. I ADMIT though, it looked so tall, that 16 inches for my 10 month old to be jumping... I thought she may have gotten "bored" and that's why she walked off - or became "discouraged." I didn't think we would be able to move up in height as quickly as the book states. Then Granny came over and set me straight...and proved me wrong. :)