Been working on getting Star to ring her brass bell. She quickly found out that if she noses the bell it makes a noise and that's what I want. I decided I'd like to get her to pull the rope, the attached one being a bit short so I clipped an old lead rope on there. I think in just about any other circumstance Star would be only too happy to take the rope in her mouth, particularly those occasions I don't want her to! So I had a big job to get her to hold it and shape her to make the bell ring. For some reason it seems when Star noses the bell it actually makes a better ringing noise than if she pulls the string. It didn't take her long to work this out and she absolutely refused to do it any other way because it wasn't as good. After two sessions I have to concede she's right and we'd better stick to doing it her way!
We've also been working on her retrieve to put her ball in a bucket which is coming on nicely. I need to shape the retrieve aspect now as she's quite happy to pick up the ball and walk to the container with it. the only thing I am having problems with is getting her to wait a bit, so I think I may need to also work on some sort of stay with her too. Although she's pretty good at waiting for me to undo gates and stuff I can think of quite a few situations where a solid stay could come in useful.
Hmm . . . I guess I forgot to comment on this one. I was going to say that I really need to teach Chrome to stay as well so it would be totally awesome if you record your progress with that on Star's blog. :) Have you tried working on it without the mat yet?
ReplyDeleteWell to be honest I haven't had much sucess with the mat either lol! The problem I now have is that we've done so much where I want Star by me she sticks to me like glue. My fault as I should have balanced the training out a lot better I guess. So it's definitely something I need to get working on now :)
ReplyDeleteEmma (sorry blogger is a menace with comments atm for some reason!!)