I'll keep this write-up short, as there are a lot of videos from today's session. In brief, Seeker proved super-solid today against some very high distractions.
The first series of distractions involved Ren. When Ren was working, Seeker had the good sense to avoid her.
When she was playing, however, it was much harder for him to resist, but he still managed to make mostly good decisions. See the videos below for the full story.
Next, I had the idea to work him in a field next to a busy street (Old Keene Mill Rd) during rush hour traffic. As I've noted, Seeker is VERY afriad of anything with a gasoline-powered engine. Nevertheless, he did very well as we gradually shrunk the buffer zone.
Unfortunately, there's no video of the last part of the session, when some school buses began pulling into the lot at the school. They were VERY noisy. At that point, Seeker had to deal with super tough distractions on both sides, and he still maintained his composure.
There is a pronounced distinction between Seeker in "work mode" and non-work mode. In work mode, he is focused, responsive, and highly tuned into his handler. But in non-work mode, he is still highly reactive and aggressive toward Ren. I am looking forward to adding the O-U-T to the repertoire to help curb this tendency.
In general, though, it seems Seeker is a worker and will need increasingly challenging jobs to keep him stable and occupied.
This series of videos has Seeker working against Ren, who is also working. He avoided temptation in this scenario.
This series of videos has Seeker working against a playing Ren. This was harder for him, and he allowed himself to be distracted both by Ren and by Leon. But after a couple of minor corrections, he quickly resumed and stayed on task.
So this dog is an imported, wild, street, feral dog from the meat markets of Kuwait. Skittish and leery of the American sounds and unexpected things that happen. Do notice that the handler works this dog against new, varied, and highly UNKNOWN distractions over and over and over and over again.
ReplyDeleteTHAT is what you need to be doing as your distractions with Sean and Sophie's toy, in the same field, are predictable. Sophie is learning they are setups so you need to find new ways, new distractions, new places to train her. She can't learn to focus on YOU, no matter what, if you keep working her same, same, same.
Roxanne