Ceilidh's Cyber Agility Progress

Now that we're back off the road Ceilidh and I have been able to concentrate more fully on her Cyber Agility exercises. Currently we're concentrating on "Get It", "Love that Glove" and "Come Touch My Hand". The road trip put us a little behind on our training but now I feel like we are getting back on track.

"Get It" is finally coming together and we're just about ready to move from luring to reinforcing tosses. I'm really happy with the effect that this exercise has had on Ceilidh's off-leash heeling. I've only been tossing the treats when she is actually in heal position and looking forward. I keep walking while she rounds up the treat and she really hustles to get back into heel position so she can get another toss. She's at 92% on getting the treats now. I think one more walk at this level and I'll try switching to the reinforcing toss. I probably should be working on this with her on my right side as well, but I'd really like to double up on the training benefit of this for obedience so that we can finally get back into the Open ring. I'm trying really hard not to push her too much, so that she will find working at obedience a relaxing, fun activity and not a stressful chore.

"Love that Glove" is going really well. We are working our way through the steps. She is able to do up through step 9 with 100% accuracy, I just would like to get our times down a little, which will involve many more repetitions. I think most of our time problems are connected to my coordination and not Ceilidh's responses.

"Come Touch My Hand" We're up through step 5 on this one and will be working more on it as we go along. It doesn't seem like it's going to be much of a problem for us other than finding time to concentrate on this. I'm sure that we'll be much further along now that I'm not having to concentrate so much on catching up with "Get It".

One thing that has been helping us this week is the fact that Sue is in Colorado, so now Ceilidh gets to train without as many distractions or competition for training time from her daughter.