Day 1

I'm doing Susan Garrett's Recallers program with Jean, mostly due to the following incident during a trial last month. Planning to record our progress on this blog for accountability, since I've got nowhere else better to do it. One of the first assignments is to take a video of where you are now, so here it is in all its glory!

Once she found out she could escape the ring, she spent the whole weekend doing just that, yikes. Hoping to get her to a level where she can be more reliable in new environments, even with accessible distractions.

Today during lunch, we did a 5-minute session of the collar grab game. We've done that game previously, so it went well. By the end, she was stretching her neck out to me to let me grab her collar (for cheese, of course). 😊

Day 2

Saturday was our day 2 of Recallers! We played a few sessions of "it's yer choice" which is about letting Jean make her own choices (but she only gets rewarded when she makes the choice I'd like). We have played this game plenty in the past, but I'm hoping to generalize it a bit more when we are out and about. We haven't progressed to putting treats on her yet, but she does a great job if they are on the floor or in my hand.

We took a break Sunday, but we're back at it again today, so I'll follow up this evening with day 3! Hoping to record some of our sessions today as well. 📼

Day 3

Today we worked on restrained recalls! (Thank you, Corey, for helping out here.) Here's a short video of one of our training sessions in the back yard. First session this afternoon was in the front yard, on leash, because that part isn't fenced in. Not the best camera work, since you couldn't actually see me catching her, oops! I love how, on the last repetition, she flinches with excitement the moment I crouch down.

Day 4

Sorry, still working on my camera angles here! This is a game of "Its Yer Choice" with Jean's kibble and my breakfast (buttered toast). We had plans to go to treibball practice tonight, but had some car trouble, so we didn't make it. Day 4 is technically supposed to be the "call ONCE" game, but we weren't able to do that during lunch since we had some errands to run.

Day 5

Corey and I played the "call ONCE" game in the backyard at lunch today. I only had to go in and grab Jean by the collar one time, which was good for her! I will probably try and have a few friends play the game with Jean as well. It is going to be really difficult to not say her name all the time when we're in the house. Maybe I need to start calling her "Gremlin" when we're not playing games. 😜

Day 6

We worked on the reinforcement zone today! Essentially what that means is rewarding Jean for sitting at my side. We did two reps on each side. She definitely prefers being out front because that’s what I’ve rewarded the most in the past.

Day 7

We worked on crate games today! Jean doesn't love her crate, but she does love her bed and is fairly sticky to it. I often use her bed as a station when between runs when we are at class or an agility trial. I do think I need to tape the bottom of the crate entrance so she's less likely to get her toes caught in there. She seemed a bit hesitant to walk over that part. I feel like I've been fairly successful in keeping up with this course, which is nice! We've missed a couple of days here and there, but writing about it here is helping. 😄

Day 8

We had treibball class tonight, so I made use of going in and out of the crate into several crate games sessions. Jean gets so worked up when she has to wait her turn in the car, so it was good practice for other reasons, too! She did really well at class tonight, pushing the ball more confidently than she has in previous classes.

Hoping we will be able to advance onto the next game tomorrow.

Day 9

Corey and I did about 20 repetitions of back and forth recall in our hallway. We also introduced Jean to her new recall word: PARTY! This will be replacing "come!" in my vocabulary for her, since I feel like I've overused that word in the past. After "kids in the hall," I did another 5-10 minutes of crate games, just getting her hyped up about running into her crate from a few different angles.