Class,
Jeanne has had some tough life situations which caused her to cease training Sophie. Life happens like that, it just does. So, we are doing a restart to get Sophie back up to speed in the hope they will be ready for the upcoming Retrieve Course 2019, beginning Sunday, Jan 6.
The Koehler curriculum is designed to be a consistent, steady layering of training. When the training has to slowed down, stopped, or to much time between lessons, the dog backslides almost to the beginning. This is what has happened with Sophie, so yesterday instead of a Random Recall lesson, we backwashed all the way back to Week 1 Longe Line training. And just like s dog forgets their lessons, so also does the handler. Life everything else in life, if you don't use a skill, especially a newly learned skill, you lose it.
So, it took about 8 minutes of some staunch LL training for Sophie to remember where to remain and for me to coach Jeanne into remembering her early mechanics.
A good start over. Jeanne has instructions to do the QT twice a day (any family member can do QT) and to do the training protocol with Sophie from Week 1 LL. Sophie WILL remember faster than an unlearned dog, she just needs clarity in communication again from Jeanne to succeed.
Onward ho...
Roxanne
This is my Pack being used as 'bait' to entice Sophie who willingly takes on lunging for them. Jeanne, at this point in her learning with me, has forgotten ALL she had learned just 6 months earlier and is back at Week 1 LL with a now wild Sophie.
ReplyDeleteBut Jeanne persevered, through many tears and angry frustrating times (her husband was diagnosed with cancer which caused a major upheaval and overload of stress within the family), took my instruction and learned. She is now an Advanced Graduate Student and extremely competent and confident KMODT handler. But she wasn't when she started and wasn't here, 6 months later. It took another 4 months to get her and Sophie (Janet and Riley also) through my FOUNDATION Course and both sisters are now Advanced Graduate Students.
But back then? You'd never think that Jeanne would learn from these videos. Yet, she persevered, hung in there, and learned.
A happy ending for the family as Sophie is now able to go places with strange dogs and NOT lose her marbles.