Maybe I'm making a snap decision based on wet grass and the fact that Charlie's a noodle, but my attempt at running him this morning failed. He had zero drive for the toy, won't run up to a plate of food- bait plate-ish thing again, urgh- and our grass is way too long at the moment to throw food.
He wouldn't touch the grass, so I had to resort to a shorter board and the verandah, which didn't have enough room for proper running. So I switched back to working on his 2o2o, and waddayaknow, he actually had enthusiasm about it.
I think if I can get a really, really strong verbal on his touch, this could actually work.
While I was waiting for demo class to start last night I took Charlie off into an unused corner and started redoing his waits. I was watching someone in the earlier "class" run at training on Monday and I found it super interesting that Lucy would break her waits up until her owner treated leaving her for a leadout as she would a stay in obedience- leave with the right leg. Lucy didn't move a muscle. Now I can't actually get away at all from Charlie at trials, but I think if I combine sitting him at my left, leaving with my right leg, and using my new word and hand signal, I'm hoping I can try and trick him into thinking it's a new behaviour he's learning and get a more solid result. Crafty Emma.
I'm using a close fist and "steady" instead of wait now; he's already got a pretty good unsteady of steady in relation to slowly and... steadying, I suppose, himself, but it's not an actual command so I figured if I can kind of use that to my advantage and work that into him waiting it should, hopefully, make it a bit more effective.
I'm going to get a copy of Control Unleashed and see what I can soak up from that, too.
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