One of my goals for our summer "vacation" is to teach Phoenix a new left finish, one with a happy little bounce instead of just walking into place. I'm working on putting a bounce in the right finish as well, but that's more of a by product of our left finish work than an actual goal itself — because I've got to ask for some right finishes too, to keep him balanced and not thinking he's going to go left ALL the time.
So anyway.
I'd like to be able to ask for this new finish with realistic expectation of getting it when we go back into the ring to finish his CDX the first weekend in September. That's six weeks away. If we practice 10 finishes in the morning and 10 finishes in the evening (c'mon, it takes about a minute to do this, seriously) that gives us 20 finishes a day and 140 finishes a week.
Of course, these will be PERFECT finishes because initially, I'll be using food to get exactly what I want. When the food disappears from my hand (okay, it already has), I'll be setting up for total success and rewarding every effort that meets my criteria.
That's 840 perfect finishes under our belt by the time we get back in the ring Sept. 4. Even if a few of them aren't perfect and don't get rewarded, there's still a really good chance he will have done about 800 perfect finishes with this 10 in the morning and 10 in the evening formula.
This is useful math I can understand!!! My elementary teacher who taught multiplication would be so proud.
Can you tell me how to teach this finish? I would like to get a bit of oomph and bounce in my corgis left finish, because the walk back turn around thing he does is just rather slow and unattractive, and he often is not straight. ANy help on the teach?
ReplyDeleteyou just made my head hurt... and I have a PhD in mathmatics (ask Tammy - she'll tell you!!)
ReplyDelete