Nala- Pivoting in Front

Nala, the service dog trainee, has been here longer than initially expected.  She passed her eval with me with flying colors and volunteered to keep her with us until another dog needed an eval.  She's my practice dog for Netta learning how to pet dogs nicely ;)

Since Nala is just turning 11 months old she's still very puppyish and even going through another crazy teenage stage right now.  A bit more testing on the rules at home than she was earlier!

We've been doing some training with her here of course.  Admittedly not a ton.  At least with Yummy I had more pressure since she was "in for final training" with me. Nala is just a pup still.

She has pretty good pivots to my left and right side now.  And I've mostly gotten rid of Nala's habit of wanting to come out in front of me to get her reward.  The dogs always have such a strong history of everyone always feeding them in front and hardly ever at the side!

So this week I started working on pivoting in front.  While Nala started out her pivot training in front of me, as I moved to pivoting at my side I always find the skill disappears.  The dogs get so excited about trying to pivot into heel that they aren't able to remain still in front even if I manage to get them there!

This was Nala's 2nd session with being re introduced to front position.  I am mostly trying to "catch" her with my treats to remain somewhat centered and prevent her from trying to get to my side.  Since Nala mostly gets rewarded on my left in heel position I try to focus my efforts on moving clockwise to have an easier time balancing out her movement.