Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Training Day 32

Today  my Trainer said that Bailey and her were up at 2am after Bailey had an "accident" on her bedroom floor. This is quite unusual for Bailey who has never pooped in the house before. Apparently he was having some stomach issues and couldn't hold it in. Thankfully my Trainer didn't rush him off to the vet like last time. But Bailey was in good spirits today despite his evening of an upset stomach.
Because of his upset stomach we stuck with only cooked chicken treats for today and we started off with light switch training. He did very well. I'm kind of leery about phasing out the treats during the light switch training. As you may remember I tried only giving him treats when he actually flipped the switch in the past and this seemed to frustrate and confuse him until he lost interest. It took me two weeks to get him interested again. So I'm trying a different tactic to teach him to always flip the light instead of just touching his nose to it. Today when Bailey touched his nose to the light he got a click and a kibble treat (kinda boring) but when he flipped the switch up he got a click, a "good boy" and a fat piece of chicken. He seemed to be flipping it more often today but still not 100%. He has definitely been more engaged in the light switch training since last Friday.
So after the light switch I wanted to do an auto-sit session. There were two dogs running around the back yard and of course they came up to Bailey to say "Hi". He was again a very good boy. He would greet them for a moment but then quickly go back into working mode and sit back down at my side. Overall the auto-sit session went very well.
We went back inside the house and after Bailey had some down time we did one more light switch session and again he did fantastic! He got one more break while we ate lunch and then it was play time. I'm doing more playtime with Bailey for two reasons. First it's just really fun! Second he seems to want to "give kisses" when he's having fun during playtime and wants to show me some love. Today he jumped up on me and was literally kissing me for two minutes straight, he just didn't want to stop giving me love, it was awesome! After some good play time we left for the day.

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