Actually following through, we go to the training room AKA parlour and work on Finishes. I start out standing and spend five minutes reminding her about swinging while I pivot left. When she's got a good handle on that, I stop pivoting and shape her to swing well into position while I stand still. That comes quickly, so I move to a chair and sit down, square with the room and facing south. As I expect, she has no clue what to do. I keep my mouth shut and shape any motion of any back foot to her right. It takes several minutes, but she suddenly realizes I'm looking for the swing, and from then on she can't lose. Another few minutes, and I move to another chair about 3' away and facing east. Oi, this is confusing! She offers me swing finishes to the original chair three times. That doesn't work. Finally she offers me eye contact, I click for that, and we start shaping again from there. Several times she offers me spins from last week, but I ignore them. Between the spins and the swing Finish, she's developing a superstitious head position with nose up and pointing slightly to the left, looking at me out of the corner of her eye, as she's about to swing her butt in. Not something I'm looking for, but not obnoxious, and a good indicator that the butt's about to come in so I'm ready to click.

We finish the session with several minutes of freeshaping her to jump up on the wicker couch. Another good session.

Stitch and I go to Wal-Mart. I borrow their electric scooter, and we go off into the wilds of the store to find some unoccupied aisles - not easy as we're getting into the Christmas season. Stitch rides at my feet on the scooter until we find an empty aisle, then I tell her to get off and we start practising walking politely beside the scooter. I've brought a sample bag of Temptations cat treats - dry and very small but seemingly utterly declicious - to keep her focused in this very distracting situation. I'm clicking for maintaining the desired position with her nose even with my knee. This isn't HER desired position, she'd rather be up front leading, but pretty soon she gets it. I put some effort into remembering to click when she's looking where she's going - I don't want her to spend her entire Service Dog career with her head cranked around looking at me.

When she's getting pretty good at maintaining position fore and aft, we go to the end of our aisle and stop just out of traffic so she can watch everyone walking by. This is tough. She wants to visit and sniff, sniff and visit, but she's boxed in on the left by shelves, and on the right by the scooter. The leash is short enough to keep her out of the intersection, so she's got no real choice but to maintain position and watch the crowd. She really gets into this when she realizes she has no choice but she's going to get clicked for doing it right anyway. Wow!

When she's able to watch the people and hold position and still know what I'm doing - that is, when she's stopped drooling like a hick in the big city - we go back to our quiet aisle to work on some jobs. I brought a sock to drop, but just in case she won't pick it up, I start with the end of her leash. It takes her a few reps to decide that "Get That" might mean the same here as it does at home, but once she gets it, she... um... gets it. And gets it. And gets it. I drop the sock, she grabs it and gives it back. I toss the sock here and there and she gets it every time. We go to another quiet aisle where there was a bit of packing foam on the floor, and I ask her to get it. Nope, can't, she'd have to get out of Heel position to do that, and she doesn't recognise it, so it doesn't have any inherent pull on her like the sock does. It's OK, you can do it, Get That. No, really, you CAN do it! So she goes to it - but it doesn't smell like me, so I didn't drop it and obviously wouldn't want it (good grief, I never worked on her picking up something I didn't drop first!). With a little more encouragement, though, she picks it up and gives it to me. I make a big fuss.

One more thing I've noticed. She's holding front-back position very well, now we need to work on a swing Finish to keep her close to the scooter and not glomming her butt out into the aisle. Between her butt and the scooter, people are starting to avoid the aisle we're in. She HAS a swing Finish, but not with me in the scooter. And, apparently, not in strange places unless I pivot to my left. I can't pivot left in the scooter, so I back up slowly instead. That does it, she scoots right in, and we spend the next 15 minutes working on better and better Finishes. By the end, when she gets too far out to the left, too far forward, or her butt starts drifting out, I just back up slightly and she corrects herself. I'm thinking next time we do this, I'll borrow the manual wheelchair so I can back up and pivot more easily.

Finally, we start going down aisles with one or two people in them and working on crotch-diving. Really, she's not THAT bad, she just wants to sniff their knees and packages as they walk by. At first I lure her past people, giving her a click and treat when each person has successfully past us without her turning her head toward them. Soon she figures it out and I can pass people leaving her to ignore them on her own. I'm adding a cue I've used all my life - "Mind Your Business".

We finish the month with a very fun session. We begin with shaping the counterclockwise spin. Now that I'm In The Game, it takes 16 seconds to get the first complete spin, and another 10 to be able to start putting it on cue. I'm a little uncomfortable using a "left turn" cue for a spin. I've used an actual left turn all my life in the show ring, with the cue "Turn". I use this same cue for left turns when I'm driving the llamas, and when having Scuba work ahead of me with her cart. A spin isn't going to cut it in those situations. Nevertheless, I start telling her the cue is "Turn".

Next we do some retrieving. I have two dumbells, and I'm sitting in the middle of one wall of the room. I toss one dumbell to my right, and toss the second one to my left while she's getting the first one, and so on. This gives me a chance to toss it in different locations and build up her ability to look for it and keep looking if she doesn't find it right away. She's brilliant at this, she knows what she's looking for and has very good duration on the search. I quickly realize that I need to put a little more effort into directional retrieves with her - when she can't find the left dumbell after a bit of searching, she doesn't give up, but turns and heads back to the right looking for the other one. So we work on directions. I have her Finish with both of us facing the dumbell, ask her to Look, and send her for it as a reward for seeing it. This works great.

We play a bit with her chasing my hand as try to grab her tail. It occurs to me that chasing her tail would be a good trick. I try holding her tail and asking her to touch it, but she's still thinking about grabbing my hand. I ask her to lie down, and that works better. I have to start having her target my hand without the tail, then move my hand further and further toward her tail, finally picking it up and then slowly moving away from it as she continues to touch it. Once I figured out asking her to lie down, this turned into a 10-minute trick. She really got into jabbing at her tail. Pretty soon she stood up to reach it better, and gave me a spin - OK, I feel MUCH better about this! The cue for the counterclockwise spin is now "Yo, Dude, Where's Your Tail?" In that 10 minutes, she was responding to the cue (of course it won't work outside a training session yet, but it's a good start!), and giving me three spins for one cue. I can see "spin until you hear the click" happening easily from here.

Fun session. I missed training.

Stitch and I spend a few moments on the Level Five Target behaviour - as if any self-respecting dog needs encouragement to leap up on the front door! Nevertheless, we work it. I get her to touch my hand several times, then move my hand toward the door. Her first few touches are tentative - she tries a nose-touch, no go. She sits, and reaches for it with one paw, not quite touching it. No go. I get her chasing my hand and try gesturing close to the door again. Finally she whomps it a good one with both front paws, and gets a click. OH! WHOMP THE DOOR! We'll have to do this in another area next time, so she doesn't think I'm talking just about doors.

On a training list, they're talking about shaping spins (actually they're talking about teaching left and right on cue for agility, but they're starting with spins), so I'm going to do that. Stitch has an eager clockwise spin that she does while I'm carrying dog dishes into the kitchen, so we'll start with counterclockwise.

I click for a head-turn to the left, for a head-turn partway back, for two head-turns. I can see lots of problems. While trying to lure a bit, I'm trying to toss the treat between her legs so she continues turning to the left, but it's not working, it's bouncing off her and she's continually having to turn back to the right to get the treat, which is helping her forget what she was doing. And it's been a while since we shaped. Scuba was so into moving that it was hard to convince her when I was trying for a duration behaviour such as eye contact or sit stays. Stitch is a much more active dog than Scuba was, and I've been rewarding calm and quiet and spending a great deal of her training time on duration behaviours because those are the ones she has the most trouble with. Repercussions, however, are that she'll try something a bit and then she reverts to duration behaviours - staring at me, sitting, lying down, standing up, crossing her front paws. And finally, it's going very slowly. She can't seem to contain a thought for more than a second. She spins once, then tries a play bow, turns her head three times to the left, then backs up...

Duh. Blame the dog, eh? Let's start with a plan here. Five treats for nothing more than SOME motion to the left. Good. Five treats for slightly more than that. Good. Five treats for nose to shoulder. nyeh - five more for nose to shoulder. OK, good. Five treats for nose back to rib cage. Oh, look, when she's going to put her nose back that far, she moves her back feet! OK, Five treats for moving her back feet... and she spins. And she spins. And she spins. And she spins.

OK, I don't suppose anyone saw THAT coming, hmmm? Plan twice, train once? Ringing a bell?

Recovering from the llama show, we spend one meal just starting to think about cues again - randomly alternating Sit, Down, and Stand. Not great, but not bad either. She occasionally disengages her brain and just guesses at the next one - particularly when I ask for one she's already giving me, like Down when she's already Down. I want her to mentally check, realize she's already there, and consciously stay there. When I ask for something and she doesn't give it to me, Scuba gets the treat that was available for that behaviour. This is a particularly inspiring way of working for Stitch, and when she makes a mistake, she doesn't make one again for maybe fifteen more repititions.

Pursuant to my resolve from last weekend's agility clinic, we have started working on Heeling without food. I ask her to come into Heel position, we Heel four steps, click, and wrestle. Now that we've worked on pulling on the stocking, she decides she could wrestle with my pant leg - which is OK as long as I can stop her if (when) I want to. She has a great time alternately Heeling and wrestling. This could easily get to be a default way of playing with her. I seem to have the energy to do it right now. I would LOVE to be tired and sore some day, ask her to Heel, and have her perk up and leap into position!