Denise Fenzi Seminar pt2- Lance's work

For those who missed the last post, I attended a Denise Fenzi seminar recently.  I was originally going to work Vito but then decided that I pretty much know where I am at in his obedience career.  We'll keep on training and having fun together and maybe at some point he will tell me he's ready.  So Lance got to go for the problem solving day!

Oh Lance.  It seems as though he was intent on making a liar out of me.  Oh no, I never forge!  Yes, heeling was the main thing I wanted to work on and Lance would not cooperate.  He did forge a ton when Denise heeled him at least.  On the positive side she was really happy with all the things I am currently doing to try and teach Lance to remain in proper position.  I currently feed behind my right leg, do lots of big right circles to try and incite him to forge, do hard left pivots when he does forge, and rarely heel in long straight lines.  The negative is that because she was mainly going off of what I was telling her, she had no real suggestions as to why his forging has been so persistent.

We then looked at Lance's go outs and my comment that he goes out straight and then does a wobbly, cute, little S after the jumps, before the sit.   Of course he didn't do it.  But we pretended and I'm going to start using some guides to help him be right.  She made a comment that he doesn't always know what he's doing but I'm running! and just can't stop!  I know he needs lots more practice on doing go outs in different locations.

Moving/signal stand I got some useful advice from watching her work another team whose dog moves the feet after she walks away.  Lance isn't as consistent about it and it's usually a trial only thing, but I think I'll still play with addressing it similarly.  She had the handler randomly walk backwards towards her dog (all the way back at first) so that the sight of the handler's back didn't always mean the dog was being left, and had the reward pre placed behind the dog.  I did one moving stand under Denise's guidance and of course Lance was an angel again!

I also talked to Denise about Lance's most recent problem of anticipating the down on the drop on recall.  She confirmed that I was on the right track by continued practice of the DOR versus doing a ton of straight recalls only.  I don't like avoiding issues :)