Cop-Cop Progress

Tonight was a real turning-point in teaching Ellie the cop-cop move. As mentioned in a previous post, the difficulty has been in getting her to place both feet in place at the same time. After all, once she has one foot in place, it's hard to tell her that she then has to do exactly the same with the other paw on my other foot. If I just sat and waited, hoping that she would get the idea, then she just gave up because she thought that the training had ended. If I tried to wiggle my foot then she would focus on placing her paw onto that foot, but also remove the other paw from the other foot. I was genuinely starting to think that we'd bitten off more than we could chew. But then, this evening, it dawned on me. It was one of those rare light bulb moments.

It dawned on me that I could do the thinking part for her. She placed her first paw onto me easily. What I then did was "scoop" her other paw with my other foot, and immediately begin walking and clicking and treating like a machine gun. Success!

We did it three times tonight to make sure that it wasn't a lucky fluke, and three times she got it right. I then tried again a few hours later and sure enough, she let me scoop her second paw with my second foot. So, I shall continue to do that for the next few days, and then eventually, she'll get the idea and she will begin to place her paw on the second foot automatically. But I'm now 99.99% certain that we'll have this move perfected in time for the end of February.

KCGC Bronze Training - Week Four

We started with some of the usual warm up exercises - sit/stay down/stay. Of course, Ellie did really well at this despite Christina wandering around trying to distract. We then did some trotting. This is a really nice exercise. Food treat at arms length and walk briskly so that the dog follows but because of the speed she breaks into a graceful trot. Very nice exercise.

We then did some recall presents, both sitting and stood up. After this, Christina did a talk about heel work to music and whether there was anything specific that we wanted to learn. A few ideas were thrown around the group and we decided on getting Ellie to walk backwards in a figure-eight around my legs. She does this forwards perfectly.

Christina explained the steps to take in doing this. One of the steps was to have her sit between my legs. However, there is a downside at the moment. As soon as Ellie sat between my legs, she thought that we wanted to do Cop-Cop which Maz is currently training her. I think she is going to have to do one thing at a time in this respect, but I look forward to her being able to walk around my legs backwards very soon!

Three Walks Per Day...

We first took ownership of Ellie in the Summer of 2007. The days were long, and the temperature was warm. We were walking three times a day and loving every second of it. As regular as clockwork, we would be out at 09:00, 13:00, and 17:00 each day. Then came Winter, and Winter being as it is, it stole the plentiful daylight hours and replaced them with darkness, dampness, and coldness.

It became impractical to walk Ellie three times a day, and so the midday walk was abandoned. I've really missed it. I know some people see walking their dog as a chore, but I've never felt that way; I love doing it. Sure, there are times when I'm really tired and every fibre within me is telling me that I'd rather sit in front of the television, being hugged warm by the central heating. But once I get walking, I'm always glad that I fought the feeling.

I've been, almost literally, counting the extra daylight minutes over the past few weeks, and this week there has been enough to resume our three walks per day. Hoorah! In fact, today was the first day, and it was like an adrenaline injection. Ellie seemed to detect my enthusiasm and performed some really good loose-leash walking for me.

February's Challenge Progress
We're still progressing with the February "Cop-Cop" challenge, though it's a difficult one. It's easy to get Ellie to place her left paw on my left foot, and her right paw on my right foot, but it's proving next to impossible to get her to put each paw on each foot at the SAME TIME.

As far as she's concerned, she's doing great. She puts her paw on my foot and I reward. Now, if I pause and hope that she'll do the second paw, then she'll just think that she's no longer getting rewarded for the single paw and stop doing the behaviour completely.

I'm going to speak to Barby I think, and see if I can get some advice for this one. If I place her paws onto my feet, she'll walk great on my feet. It's just teaching her to mount both feet at the same time that we're struggling with.