Start of Level 1 work

Last night Baron and I started working on Levels with Lisa Wood who graciously offered to team up with me. So far Baron did rather well on the cues I previously started working with him on. Sit, Down, and Come. The two other cues, Zen (leave it) and touch has never been worked on with him but I think it won't take long for him to understand.

With Level 1 "Zen" Baron already doesn't try to persist to get to the treat in my closed fist so we shouldn't have any problems there.

Level 1 "Touch" should be fairly easy for him to get as he already is "touching" my palm with his nose when I place it in front of him. The next step will be to have him move forward to touch rather than have me place my hand directly in front of his nose.

Lisa and I will work on "Wait" (stay), "go to mat" and Loose Leash Walking (LLW). Baron has already been doing rather well with Wait and has been working on LLW.

Lisa explained her criteria for "Wait" is to be able to walk around her dog when he is sitting and step over him when he is laying down so I'll adopt that criteria as well.

My criteria for LLW , level 1 is the following

1) Baron is the correct "zone".

The Zone is defined as walking on my left side, between me and the point where his leash becomes taut.

2) Once any pulling occurs on the leash, walking will stop. When leash becomes slack again the walking will resume.



Right now Baron is understanding rule #2 but doesn't get rule #1 very well however only when Baron is in this zone is when I will click.

I would like to move the criteria up to a point where Baron understands that sniffing and moving to the right and across my path is not acceptable but this will probably have to be addressed as we continue working on LLW. For now when Baron starts to sniff around I continue moving or call him to me. I'll have to see if there is a better way to address this.

There is also no cue for LLW. I am currently working on this but not sure if a cue is required. I consider this more of a rule than a cue but I'll address this later as well.

Pending items for me right now are the following

1) What hand signal would I like for "down".
2) what cue word would I like for "go to mat"
3) Not discussed but what hand signal for "sit".