04 November 2008

Paw Targetting

Even though yesterday was her birthday, Molly had a training session. She enjoys it, so no reason to skip it.

The last few times we'd trained, Molly still insisted on retrieving her paw target. After a tip from an online friend, we tried taping the post-it target to the floor. So far the tape seems to be holding up to her attempts to scrape it off the floor and she got a LOT better at the behavior in one short session.


Many of her hits did include trying to scrape the target off the floor, so I worked on clicking early, before the scrape, to fine-tune the behavior.

My timing wasn't perfect, so sometimes I clicked for a paw hitting off the target. But she did get less scrape-y in her pawing and actually did almost the whole session standing up! Standing it great progress because initially she thought she was supposed to lie down while pounding her paws into the floor.

I think she'll have this behavior down in no time if I just keep training.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Glad it is coming along. Well done. She seems to be turning into a superb dog.

Wish Ziggi would retrieve as much as her!