Friday, March 5, 2010

Magics Class

Last night was night 2 of Magics acting/tricks class.  Last week we just worked on fine tuning our clicker handling and working on a touch command, both hand touchs and touch stick.  Magics touch had gotten rather sloppy so this was a good refresher, on the stick touch I had let it get bad to where he thinks he can touch any part of the stick, so we worked on touching the end only.

Last night we worked on several things. starting work on a 'go out" to a toy to touch.  I have not started teaching Magic a go out yet, so this will be good starter work for that too.  Next she talked about teaching the dogs a pick up and return with items.  Magic is already pretty good with that, but we will do lots of practice this week anyways. We also worked on shaping a head down down, and a bow. Neither of these were easy for Magic to get- some dogs at class had it before class was over, but not Magic, so I know we will have ample work to do this week.

I am not good at breaking down a behavior so this is challenging for me too. But fun. Very fun. The class is not large, we have 2 pugs, a shih tzu mix, a rat terrier/BC mix, a labradoodle, a golden and my favorite dog in class a fluffy english mastiff.  She is quite the character, and just so unique looking, and is just full of personality.  I just LOVE those big dogs.

3 comments:

Jules said...

oh! I must have missed your post about joining this class. How exciting! It sounds liek a lot of fun.

penni said...

You should have a blast with real tricks. Unfortunately, around here, the dogs think if they sit for dinner they've completed a trick -- baddogs (but mostly bad dog trainer).

Laura and The Corgi, Toller, & Duck said...

sounds like fun! the heads down tricks is one of my favorites, the dogs look so cute!