Summit enjoying his pool on a hot day
This morning Soleil and I participated in Ricky's Training Challenge. Our challenge? Shape Soleil to get all four feet in a large tupperware lid. We had a slow start with Soleil offering all the behaviors she's learned this week. Finally she looked at the lid and I marked it and then she took one step towards the object and I marked that... it went fairly quickly from there. She is such a smart puppy and shaping simple tricks like this is really improving my timing and concentration. A couple times I clicked late or didn't click a response when I should have but by the time she was consistently walking up to the lid, we were on a roll. By the time we finished with her breakfast (about 7 minutes), she would walk up and place her two front feet into the lid. I wish I had a video camera (it's on the shopping list!). We'll do some more when I get home from work this afternoon. So that was a fun and thanks to Ricky for posting about the Training Challenge! We'll need to think of more tricks to train.
The photo of Summit has nothing to do with this post other than I think he is really cute ;-) In the afternoon when I get home, I play frisbee with the dogs (not puppy, she's not allowed outside when the big dogs are running). After a few retrieves, Summit happily jumps in his pool and lays down until he's cooled off. He insists on bringing the frisbee in too though so I'm having to throw a wet floppy frisbee. Sage gets in the pool too but prefers to simply stand in the pool until her pads are cool.
Maybe my next trick is to shape Soleil to get in water?
9 comments:
Hmmm, I hear shelties aren't too keen on water!
Thats all miley will do to. She just puts all four feet in the pool for a couple of minutes and then jumps out. Summit looks very cute. Diana
Ahhhh, Summit looks so neat in the pool and Solei just sounds like a superstar with the shaping, what a good puppy. It is obvious from how you write about her that she has totally stolen your heart, LOL, that is just soo cool and really makes it so much fun to read about her and how she is doing.
Great photo of Summit. Taz does the same thing as Sage, just wanting to get his paw pads wet when in a stock tank. It drives me crazy because I know how hot he gets and he loves to swim in bigger bodies of water. I can make him sit in the water (which he hates), but he refuses to lie down. I didn't realize it might be genetic, as Gel/Katie and Kirk both lied down in the stock tank like normal dogs. Sage and Taz must have inherited some sort of recessive standing gene!
Great training challenge! I would've loved to have seen video of Soleil learning to put her feet on the lid! Must be so cute! I will be interested to see how you get her to put the back feet on too - I don't know how to put all four feet in anything yet.
It's the way you all teach tricks that really amazes me! Well done on the tupperware trick :) Soleil is a very clever pup!
Eva loves playing in the water but I'm not so sure about swimming. She hasn't tried yet.
Cute! I don't think Katie, my 3.5 year old sheltie would get in a pool. But what do I know, she's never had the opportunity!
Good job shaping Solei! That must be fun!
Oh, don't let those sheltie's fool you, once they get the opportunity they could turn out to be water maniacks like us. Brutus and Tytus
Oooh, I hope she loves water like Brutus and Tytus. It is so helpful when training and trialing and they need to cool down.
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