Luna Level 5 Homework

@Lauren & Luna Great! She’s super good at wrap.

Pause on doing any heel -> front OR heel -> wrap. Just do front, wrap, reset, front, wrap, reset for review.

For the balance reasons I talked about a couple posts back.

How is sit in front doing?

Wanna start a new thread? This one is getting intense. 😅

@Coralyn - Venus and Mars K9 haha it’s A LOT. I’m practicing front sits (no verbals) on the side. Will do A new thread with some videos for that and the heel stuff over the next few days.

@Lauren & Luna Perfect! Honestly I don't think you need to practice anymore wrap for awhile. Just work on fronts and heel, and then we'll plug it all back together later.

This is good! This looks more like your regular heel practice, but your leash is just there, which is perfect.

Look at that very first step you did. Minus the tiny head twitch of excitement, this is exactly what I want to see. She's locked in and thinking about perfect heel position the whole time.

Another thing you can play with is high, squeaky praise during that first step forward, to encourage sticking with you. That's something I also use to buy me a little bit more time before the cookie.

After you give the treat, instead of walking forward right away, wait until she connects with you/lifts her head again completely before you step off. If she autosits, that's fine. But I think pausing will help with the glance-chew-glance-chew thing that is happening. You are successfully bringing her to a slow halt with your cookie, so that should all work out smoothly.

You are squeezing her against the couch pretty aggressively for this session, I will say. 😂

Ok, let's talk about that reset though. What I see is that you have this nice heel against the barrier, and then you go to restart on the other side, and Luna thinks she's maybe still heeling, but maybe not, who knows, so she hangs out just approximately near your left leg. At some points she might even be doing a decent right turn heel. But there's no structure to this, and you want a clean reset. Make sure your reset looks really different from heel. You can toss treats within the range of your leash. You can walk backwards. You can have her do nose touches back around. Anything that doesn't look like heel. :-) Otherwise, you've got a recipe for making transitioning off the barrier a huge pain the butt.

@Coralyn - Venus and Mars K9 this is super helpful feedback! I’ll do some more runs with her leash and play with resetting and not being so tight on her against the couch. I don’t think I was thinking through the reset pieces but that’s very helpful!

Look at you and your signs! So cute!

Ok, I want to wait to put all of this together, though, since we lost some of our pretty heeling here. Practice this first:

• Straight line heel against a barrier.

• Leash in your RIGHT hand, draped in front of your body.

• Reward from left hand as she is used to.
  

Some people definitely do hold the leash in their right hand, but I think that that changes the picture a whole lot. And why deal with that?

Then the next step before we bring her off the barrier for heeling is going to be adding left turns off the target, which is coming up in the next level (I’m pretty sure). :-)

@Coralyn - Venus and Mars K9 bahhhh I didn’t even think about that part 🤦🏻‍♀️ With the pretty healing. i will dial back and go to your bullets.

Trying to do too much always - DEAL

@Lauren & Luna It's just about balance. :-) Some skills need to be practiced in a specific proportion, otherwise wonky things start to happen.

@Coralyn - Venus and Mars K9 that’s why you’re the teacher! 🙂

This is lovely!! Her head is up, her responses are prompt.

At the very end, it looks like she lost a little bit of momentum. I think that if either of you lose your flow, do a treat toss break for her, because she gets worried about being wrong. But you are all set for this exercise!

Looking super fancy! The verbal cue looks good - that very first rep especially shows comprehension in a big way. Now I want you to totally let her finishing chewing before you turn, every time. (Because she’s bobbing her head while she chews and turns.) I would also like to see how she does with some 1/8 turns, as an experiment.

Well, I think I already gushed over this on instagram! She’s looking great. You’ll probably want to use your hand signal for sit for normal halts, too, for when we start working off the wall. Her sits are perfect right now, but it’s nice to have the hand signal in your toolbox for backup, should things (butts) ever go awry.

@Coralyn - Venus and Mars K9 noted! Will definitely do that! Is it ok that I’m luring her front still for these front wraps? I’m trying to make that happen more organically but struggling bc we’re still on the wall.

@Lauren & Luna Yes, it makes sense to lure her because you are asking for multiple new/hard things in the same session. Luring sets her up in front (for the wrap practice) without really asking her to front, minimizing the amount of newness in the same session.

Oops, sorry I somehow missed this the other day!

This is looking EXCELLENT. I love how she is moving herself in those last few inches.

If you want to get fancy or have something to play with, you don't have to do perfect quarter turns every single time. :-)

Lookin‘ good!

Weaning off the wall, I will reccomend using a hand signal for sit, to help remind her to keep that booty in. :-)

@Lauren & Luna Is she busting ahead of you for some heel against the barrier sessions if you do heeling second?

@Coralyn - Venus and Mars K9 I’ll have to see if I still have the video, I wouldnt say busting but she’s less tuned into watching me and more into moving ahead for herself. If I still have the video I’ll upload, if not I’ll take a new one tomorrow with us doing that after she’s all jigs from target work.

I'm curious to see it! Because somewhere in between those 2 moves (lagging and charging) is the sweet spot, lol!