Writing training cards & having fun with my dog!

Building on what I did yesterday, I bought about 300 more business-sized cards today to write down all the new Levels’ Behaviours & their Steps. I also got highlighters to give each Level its own color.

    Steps to Success Level One = Yellow.
    Steps to Success Level Two = Green.
    Steps to Success Level Three = Pink.
    Steps to Success Level Four = Orange.

At this moment, I have 14 sets of cards, one of which contains ways to test Stimulus Control (also works for Cue Discrimination), three sets of cards for L1 Zen, Come & Sit, four sets of cards for L2 Zen, Focus, Come & Sit, four sets of cards for L3 Zen, Focus, Come & Sit and two sets of cards for L4 Zen & Focus. The individual sets of cards are held together with paperclips. Me likes!

I’ve folded the cards in half, written the name of the contents & the Level it belongs to on the front, and the requirements for the behaviour on the inside at the top. This way I can take a set of cards, which is one Level of Steps for one Behaviour, and simply flip through them to see what we’re working on to accomplish.

My first set of Zen cards that I made yesterday ended up in the trash, because I realized while using them that I hadn’t written things in the right places. I had written the requirements on the inside bottom half of the card, which meant that the TOP of the set of cards corresponded with the BOTTOM of the set of cards. Um, OK, that doesn’t work smoothly in a training session.

I’m definitely thrilled with my latest version though! Yay me!

To use up Luna’s dinner, we did another training session like yesterday. I still think her Cue Discrimination is pretty good, but until I commit to actually doing things in a way I can keep records, I won’t guess her Success Rate.

Also, she did absolutely BEAUTIFUL Leave Its tonight; no throwing out other behaviours other than Stand & Stare or Sit & Stare, both of which I like. And no diving for treats I tossed between her feet. She nailed one 20s open-handful-of-food-in-your-face Leave It fabulously. What a GREAT girl!

Let’s see if I can find another nice picture... yup, Luna at three years old in the back yard, ignoring me while I’m trying to take nice portrait pictures of her. ;-)