Raph – 2×2 – Day 3 – Session 4

Summary — Session 4 (5 mins): one set of poles at 2 and 8 oclock.

A GREAT session for Raph! He still makes mistakes when he has to drive further to the poles, but I can not believe how resilient he has been to mistakes. Before this process, I would have pegged him as the one to shut down. But so far – Gitta has been more likely to give up on me that Raph is. Watching the video is great because I can see his tail up and wagging the whole time.

I tried to remember to work angles – but at less distance for him. Then towards the end I worked on distance from the ‘easy entries’. You’ll also notice one time when he gets it wrong and immediately goes and gets it right but I do NOT reward. Susan pointed this out as one of the big mistakes she sees on YouTube. If they get it wrong then right and you reward – you are rewarding the whole chain, wrong then right. You might end up with a dog that finds it easier to just try one way – see if they get rewarded – then try the other rather than a dog that KNOWS the correct way to go. So I don’t reward, I get him back to reset him, and when he gets that right he gets the reward (and alot of verbal praise from momma!).

I don’t think he’s ready to move on till he can drive to the poles from a greater distance. I’m not sure how to work on that other than to keep pushing it. I think instead of working more difficult angles – I’ll stick with what we’ve done so far (basically, the 180 degrees from one side of the poles to the other), but continue to push the distance.