This week's session was about one of the best we have had. Maz had decided that day to experiment with not taking Ellie on her afternoon walk, to see if it affected her training session in the evening. This was a great decision as Ellie was bright-eyed and raring to go when we arrived at the barn.
We did the customary sit/down stay for warm-ups. We did this for two minutes, some of it where I was out of her sight. She stayed for the duration.
We then took turns at going outside and practising some heelwork on leash and then back inside to practise heelwork off-leash. Ellie did really well with both. She was attentive to me, even when I started jogging outside, she stayed at my side and didn't falter once. Each time I said 'stop', she stopped immediately, sat down, and waited for the next command. She was faultless.
Back inside, we did some send to bed practise and some send away around an object - in this instance it was a chair. Top marks for both of these.
We then started to learn how to get Ellie to stand from a sitting position on command. The idea was to get Ellie to sit in front of me and then step off with one foot as if starting to walk into her. This action causes most dogs to move back into a stand. Ellie seemed to grasp this pretty quickly, although at the beginning, I was clicking and rewarding her before she had steadied herself, thus giving her the notion that I was rewarding her for going backwards. Christina noticed this and corrected me. I think this is one of the things that she is going to perfect really quickly.
An excellent night's work. I couldn't fault Ellie at all!
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