Day 48

Hops practiced back and take for his breakfast and made progress with both. With backing, I upped the anti by having him back onto a two inch high by one foot wide box instead of the half inch high mat that is very long. He had a fairly high rate of failure in the beginning (he worked through it well, no giving up), even though I had him very close to the box. He did lots of sidewise and backward steps and it took some effort on his part to figure out to lift his back legs up onto the box. He did get it though and by the end of the session he was able to back up four feet straight to the box, lift his back feet up onto it and stay there. Then we practiced take with a metal obedience dumbbell. He is doing much better with this and even lifted the dumbbell up sixteen inches off the ground to my hand! Good boy!

 

 

That afternoon Hops went to work with me and was as usual, very good. His crate was uncovered all day and he was quiet and spent his time working on food toys, watching classes or sleeping. In little bits throughout the day he practiced sit and down and stay, heeling, getting into heel, downs on the table and walking on various items. Once when I was dragging a large, wide plank, he hopped onto it and rode on it while I moved it around! Hops played lots of tug at home and had a say hello session for dinner. He is clearly lifting both paws when I put my hand near them so I started adding the word. He even lifted them for Jeremiah tonight, good puppy!