Yesterday I took a little video of some fooling around. Nothing special, but I have not posted something for a long time and it shows quite good how the trainings situation looks like right now.
It's freezing cold (-10°C and falling), it's usually dark when we get there on work days, the ground is frozen, so we are limited to fooling around in the paddock. Mucki has finally gotten the fetch game right - his new toy (catch-ball) was just the right catalyst for it
. It's a very self-reinforcing toy.
http://youtu.be/IEh18jZnkX0Not on video, but also results of the training situation lately are a lot of other tricks:
I was - after a long time of trying half-heartedly - able to show Mucki how to do the Plié (front crunch) properly.
He has learned how to put up a traffic cone
. This is such a fun lesson! And astonishingly easy too. Mucki had it done after ten minutes of shaping and on the next day he was able to put up three cones in a row
.
It was really interesting to watch him and guide him through the shaping process. I don't do this kind of exercises very often with him, but he was so absorbed in it that I think I have to do this more often. It's such a good opportunity to see the learning process in every detail.
Finally, I started with the pinnacle of all positively reinforced lessons: NOT eating a carrot!
Inspired by the one and only Pia, I challenged Mucki to boldly go where no Lipizzaner has gone before!
We made some good progress and I'm very excited to see where we will end up with this lesson
.