TEAM 3 Practice
Now that the weather is finally nice and we can train outside I've been doing more TEAM 3 stuff with Zumi again. All the exercises are very familiar to her and have been for a while.
The challenge we are working on now is putting stuff in sequence. I'm always amazed at how behavior can break a little when you start jumping right in from one exercise to the next!
We have great flow and connection between exercises, it's just the confidence of getting it correct on the first time without any little warm up!
It's not always the same thing that "breaks" but of course there's always 1 little thing!
So no actual testing yet. I'll practice going from exercise to exercise, but not always in the same order and no hesitation to break something out and work on the little pieces again before trying the full exercise.
The exercise that has surprised me the most that she's struggled with on the first rep is the retrieve with distraction! I ALWAYS have Zumi offer to spit out her toy and than work on the dumbbell with the toy on the ground still. So I was shocked with Zumi several times went for the toy during our test practices.
I think the added difficulties were:
- I was the one to put the toy on the ground, not Zumi offering to drop it
- I practiced ending the heeling portion then going to get the toy where it is located off to the side.
This must look to Zumi like I'm getting the toy to reward her great heeling when really I'm just going to get it for the distraction piece and plan on playing with her AFTER the retrieve. I bet if rewarded her with the toy first then set it on the ground it would look more similar to our usual training setup and be easier for her.
Other little issues that have cropped up are
- anticipating the 2nd position change! A little bit of a suprise as she's done so well with position changes and waiting, but not a huge shock.
- Angled front after the mini go out/directed cones. Zumi typically has pretty great fronts from cookie tosses and cone sends but this is making me aware that it's not consistent yet on that "first" rep. The one that really counts!
I've been doing a lot more cookie toss fronts in the house and I've been able to replicate some issues. If there's not much space behind me after the front she's more likely to be slightly off in anticipation of turning for the thrown reward vs being sent through my legs. And if I put the reward behind her she has a hard time fully turning her back to the reward even if she's not trying to look at it. Zumi wants to be slightly angled to the pressure.
