Training Day 15

As I mentioned before, my trainer is out of town this week and I get to see Bailey every day. So when I got there Bailey was hanging out in the kitchen with two other dogs. He was excited to see me and I took him into the den. I wanted to work on having him turn on the light switch. First I added an extra piece of round plastic to the light switch to make it longer and easier for Bailey to "accidentally" hit and turn on. Then to get him interested in the light switch I put peanut butter on the switch. He would lick the peanut butter off the switch and a few times he hit the switch up and turned the light on. But he didn't quite make the connection between the hitting of the switch and the light turning on. To him he was just licking peanut butter. Then I tried my trainers method, by having my aide gently push up the switch with Bailey's nose and then rewarding him with a treat and the clicker. Still I could tell Bailey wasn't getting it. He was actually getting frustrated because he didn't understand what we were asking him to do. So I decided to stop and do some auto-sit training instead. He did pretty good even though I could tell he was still kinda frustrated. Then it was break time. Bailey crashed out. Bailey seems a bit sad because my trainer took his brother with her on her trip, and I can tell Bailey misses his buddy. So before leaving today I decided to get some play time in to cheer him up.
Before lunch I took him out to go pee and used my new technique of putting him on a longer leash. He peed pretty quickly. After lunch it was play time. I had never used the tennis court before but it is an excellent wide open space for him to play in. I'm trying to teach him to fetch. Despite his golden retriever and Labrador genes he's not much of a fetch player. He just watches the ball and occasionally saunters over to it. So I decided to get one of the other more playful dogs from the house and bring her into the tennis courts to play with Bailey. They had a great time chasing each other, doing "zoomies", and hanging out. So when they were good and tired I brought them back into the house and left.