The little things

The boys and I are busy learning new dog dancing routines and sometimes, when you work on getting the flow in the full routine, you can lose accuracy in the details. 

So these last two days have been all about accuracy and details. 

In dog training you talk about looking for tendencies rather than problems as an issue is a lot easier to correct, as long as it is only a tendency.  

I realised a couple of days ago, that Gollum had developed a tendency to stand with one of his legs in front of me, when he is doing heelwork on my right side facing opposite me, so we have worked on correcting this. 

In Heelwork To Music, the dog is supposed to be parallel to the handler at all times and unparallel heelwork positions will give you a low accuracy score. 

Picture 1 (from left) shows the incorrect position. Picture 2 shows a better position and picture 3 shows how I want to position to look (he could be a bit closer to me, but he is nice and parallel, which was my success criteria today).

I get the correct position by rewarding the good ones and ignoring the bad ones. So I ask for the position, if he is parallel, I click and reward. If not, I take a step to the side and give him another chance to get the correct position and a click/reward. Gollum will soon realise that only parallel positions pay and I will get more of them. Quite simple really.
And luckily Gollum is a bit of a nerd - he enjoys working on details like this. You can see the motion blur from his wagging tail in most of the pictures. 

If you haven't seen a Heelwork To Music routine before, then have a look at this. It will make the fuss about accuracy more understandable :-)

PS. My blip today is really a picture of a mirror :-)

See you tomorrow
Emmy and the Hazyland Boys