Mollie's leash skills are improving. Loose leash walking is always a lot tougher to teach than it looks. A big part of the challenge is that pulling and walking ahead of us is so rewarding. Being the first one to get some where, even if it's as simple as sniffing a bush, is exciting. Pulling feels good and, when we pull back, it creates more drive forward and can make the pulling worse. The problem? Pulling is not pleasant for most humans. It's such a joy to walk a dog who is walking nicely beside you but, to get to that point, it takes some effort.
We're starting to add in more distractions to our drills and she's doing well. It takes her far less time to get acclimated and check in with her person when going into a distracting situation. We're almost ready to try the store again.
Her automatic sit when we come to a stop is coming along nicely too. All in all, she's much more checked in when we are walking.
It doesn't hurt that we've had some nice exercise before our practice sessions. Mollie is good at exercising the puppies too.
Seems hard to believe but you can exercise a dog too much and it will wind them up even more. Mollie is pretty good about regulating herself though and only needs a few interruptions in play to keep things on an even playing field.
Her on/off switch is coming along nicely too. She is nice a responsive to commands even with a lot of distractions all around her. She's holding her stay nicely too with only an occasional reminder to stay in place.
She's doing such a nice job keying into people, I make sure to interact a lot with her during play.
Which also means more practice with her recalls. Nice and solid! I'm continuing to cheer her on the whole way to keep up that nice speedy response.
And happy. We like happy responses. She's so much more likely to repeat the behavior when she LOVES doing it. That's why we always try to make it fun and exciting (as well as pay off big).
My favorite way to end a training session...I love snuggling up with Mollie. What a sweet girl.
Another successful day!
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