taking my dog for granted

Bailey's a really easy dog to live with, for the most part. I can take her pretty much anywhere (heck, she travels everywhere with me lately and I don't stress about it, neither does she) and she's able to chill out and relax. She's also quite easily motivated for training, and always has been. I didn't (and still don't) have to put forth a ton of effort to reward her. She has a lot of behaviors, some are on cue, some are offered, and a select few are on stimulus control. I definitely take her for granted.

I have worked with her and taught her many behaviors in the last couple years, even if we act like I haven't sometimes. Most of the time I just forget the cue I put it on (Robin, I promise I'm trying to be better about that!) so I wait for it to be offered, heavily reinforce, then wait for it to be offered again. Not very effective training, I know!

The point of this post is that a couple friends and I got together to watch a Silvia Trkman video on Tuesday night. Part of the video was teaching heeling and part of teaching heeling is pivoting. Bailey has pretty heeling, she has better-than-decent pivoting (thanks to Kristen VanNess for helping me teach that a couple years ago), and she's quite animated while doing it! I definitely got some good (new) information from the video, but it also made me train my dog a little bit (practicing already competent behaviors is still training). It also made me realize how much I really take my dog for granted. She's quite a talented little dog, if I remember how to cue her!



Now... should I go teach something new, or work on older behaviors that still aren't on cue? :-)