Training Day 9

So from today until Friday my Trainer is out of town delivering another service dog to its owner. This means I get to see Bailey Wednesday- Friday. When I got to my Trainer's house all of the dogs were playing in her Tennis courts. Usually when I get there Bailey is hanging out in his crate or if he is in the Tennis courts, my Trainer gets him out for me. However today I had to get him out of the Tennis courts. When I was rolling up to the Tennis courts Bailey got super excited and started jumping around, wagging his tail and running towards the gate. None of the other dogs were nearly as excited as he was. When I got him out, he was excitedly wiggling and licking my hand. What's more I had a new aide with me that Bailey had only met one time before, so I knew that he was excited because he saw me and not my aide. After we got in the house we did bell training and he was very good. I used peanut butter as a reward because I want to ask his vet about the cheez whiz before I continue to use it. We also practiced the mat. I cooked up some chicken treats ( recipe here) and rather than make him pop up to lick peanut butter off my hand (which kind of defeats the purpose of having him lie on the mat), I asked my aide to periodically toss him a treat if he stayed on the mat. He did super well and eventually just conked out. After his nap I decided to try something new. I eventually want him to automatically sit every time I stop my chair. To train this I just took Bailey on the leash and walked him in the back yard. I perodically stopped and just waited for him to sit and look up at me (sometimes this took a minute), and when he did my aide would use the clicker and hand him a chicken treat. He got it sooooo fast (within 15 minutes). By the end of the training session he was sitting quickly everytime I stopped my chair. Then it was lunch time. Bailey just slept the whole time. I wanted to do one more "auto-sit session" after lunch, to really cement the lesson in. He again did remarkably well. My aide thought that I had previously been working with him to automatically sit. And I was like No. After we were done he got to hang out with his brother.