No longer just sit and stay for doggy parkour, yay!

Urban agility challenge – Last month at the park

I’m a good girl, where’s my treat??

This was about a month ago, we’re still not very good at completing hopping over the full set of park stools with speed.

Urban agility challenge – Yesterday at the park

No video but Donna completed this about 3 times. Here’s the map I drew to illustrate.

Format inspired by @khiesti

From left to right, hopped on stool 1, 2 and 3, hopped off and ran to stools on the right (about 14 human steps away) and hopped across those as well, go back the same way, and than repeat. By the third set, she appear to be losing focus and slipped a little but did not fall so we stopped there.

It did take some time to get to this point, simply because working on her focus and off-leash heel/run was a pre-requisite for Donna to do this safely with speed. Running on a leash presents a possibility of me accidentally jerking her along if we ran at different speeds or she just accidentally tangling with the leash when hopping up or down stools.

Training heel

Training heel, with the intention of leading to off-leash heel, came with its own particular challenges. I did try to work with Donna on that pretty early on, but at that time Donna didn’t have the type of focus she has now to make it any fun or successful. So I gave up on that after a while.

… I absolutely don’t have the confidence to set her off leashless. Once she’s in the dog run without her leash, she sets to sniffing everywhere and doesn’t hear me…I did try treating her as we walk before to encourage her to walk with me (with the leash).  And I must admit, it’s not fun since I have to keep bending down to deliver treats to her mouth and every time she sees a treat she sits automatically which disrupts the walk.
– Jun 16 comment on Linda’s blog

Subsequently, Linda Trunell’s article in June gave me the push to continue trying.

 Try to keep walking while offering the treat with your left hand (if she’s walking on your left side) so she will take it without sitting. You will need some really special treats to be more interesting than the wonderful p-mails. Sniffing is the best part of the walk for her so she should be allowed to do plenty of that but only with a loose leash. Sometimes a little play indoors (fetch or tug) before the walk helps to release some energy and allow her to have more impulse control. If you practice indoors with the leash it will be easier for her to focus and help to establish the habit. Don’t be discouraged. The learning curve moves up slowly in the beginning but if you persevere you will see you need the treats less and less and you both will have this loose-leashing walking thing down pat!
-Jun 17 tips from Linda

Instead of serving up Donna’s kibble in a bowl, I started getting her to walk with me in the living room and dispense the kibble one by one every time she walked beside me and made eye contact with me.

We are practising leashless heel at home, its working fine at home since she is not so distracted and actually lifts her head to look at me and take the kibble, rather than outside on the leash where she doesn’t look at me and I have to bend down to deliver it to her when she walks nicely by my side. 

…although my fingers hurt after a while since sometimes she nips them when she is too eager to take the kibble from my fingers.
– Jun 24 comment on Linda’s blog

The good thing about using her mealtime kibble to work on heel is that the training becomes as regular as the mealtime. It enforces me to work on it because the dog has got to eat. If it’s not part of mealtime, I sometimes get lazy and skip days between training :P

 If she is really grabby offer it in your palm or drop it on the floor in front of her. If you offer in your fingers and she has a tendency to grab, you might be subconciously pulling your hand back which encourages the grabbing instinct. It just takes patience and practice
– Jun25, more advice from Linda

In this case, delivering from the palm worked better with Donna. Dropping it on the floor causes her to pause as she stops to pick it up and munch on the kibble, rather than continue to walk with me.

Eventually, we were able to practise this outside the flat with Donna still focusing on me, rather than the outside distractions like sniffing the grass :) And this of course paved the way for me having to confidence to have her leashless and running around jumping on stools for a longer length of the path than in the previous month, where she was only off-leash for hopping on the stools slowly one at a time and back on the leash once she was off the stools.

Urban agility challenge – Up-up, Sit-stay, Come!

Donna is a cat!! Do you see my bow tie??? The human thinks the bow tie is too subtle. The lady in the lift must have missed it, maybe that’s why she refused to take the lift with us D: Haha!
Humans, it is safe to take the lift with Donna!!

On a whim I got Donna to hop on the table so I could take a picture of her with the stray cat on the table in the background. That cat is almost always there. You can’t see the cat very well in the picture though :P

Got Donna to stay, walked to another table a distance away to practise her recall.

Good day :)

Note: Many thanks to Linda at my positive dog training blog who definitely helped me to push on working on heel and off leash walking with Donna :)