Silvia Trkman- Tricks pt 1!

OMG!  I've been like a little schoolgirl since I got to meet my hero tonight!  Silvia Trkman is in town and I am giddy with joy :)  Lance is entered in the trick seminar that was this evening and part two on Tuesday.  It was an absolute blast.  Even though I can't really say I learned anything new since I am one of those crazy obsessive girls who watches her youtube videos over and over again, it was really good to be able to practice some of the tricks with Lance and really focus.  I focus much more on what I'm rewarding in a class setting than at home.  Lance is tired and probably ate more treats in those two hours then the food he gets over two days!  Here are the tricks we worked on and then we went over a few more:

1. Wrap a foot around a pole.  This was perfect as I have really been wanting to teach Lance to hold an object in his paws but have been struggling with the stubbyness of it.  I haven't used a pole before and Lance rotated through circling it, biting it, nose targeting it, and using his paw.  It wasn't long before he had a really good foot wrap and I was soon able to put him into a beg and ask for the behavior.  I'm sure he can't do it with an object not being supported by the floor but it was good to see that he CAN get there if I find an object slender enough for his paws to hold!

2. Pivoting on a block.  Silvia is huge on this and is how she teaches heel position.  Since Lance already knows this very well and can do it without the block and can sidestep and back up, Silvia wanted me to try back feet on and pivoting.  Lance quickly offered me the 2o2o position and then I started using pressure to get the pivoting.  I wanted to mainly free shape so I didn't use a lot of pressure at first but then gave up and used my body more.  We ended with Lance able to go 90 degrees but as soon as he got to 180 he would switch to doing a full circle and put his front feet back on the block to do so.

3. Duration of holding a leg in the air.  Lance has both front feet for this and can do both hind legs but only with me pointing.  I wanted to get rid of the pointing so put the block behind us again.  This was hard for the corig but he did start quickly offering the leg lifts with the block about 1-2ft behind me.  By the end we had duration of 3 seconds on the back right so I switched to back left and got 2 seconds.

4.  Backing onto an object- Handstand.  I was going to to sit this one out for obvious reasons but Silvia thought it would be ok for the corgi to work on as long as he always had support in the position.  So we got the block back out and told poor Lance that I again wanted 2 back feet instead of 1 :P   I was able to raise it pretty high and to a point where I didn't think he could lift one leg and then the other onto it anymore but he proved me wrong by really stretching with his foot.

5. Beg- Penguin.  I have really wanted to teach Lance the penguin trick but have had zero luck with getting him to go forward.  We have had some success with getting the back up in beg going though.  As it turns out Silvia teaches the forward movement pretty earlier on so that the dog is still learning balance and wobbles a bit.  It's much easier to get the foot moving forward to steady oneself than if they are already have great balance and strength.  At this point Lance was getting very tired so I didn't practice too much.  But I was thrilled to have a few a few instances where his hind foot moved half an inch!

After the seminar I asked Silvia if she thought Corgis could hold a paw over their nose as I have been struggling with Lance's duration.  She wasn't sure as they apparently don't have too many corgis in Solvenia but thought that since Lance can cross his paws and can swipe at his nose that it would be possible.  It took me months to teach the crossing of his paws the first time and then another few weeks to teach the other direction.  So I guess I'll keep working on it!