Day 235

Two sessions, both outside. How to describe what is going on? I am going to try and describe the impossible. Sanity is now working the 3 to 6 o'clock positions and she has moved to the taste method of discrimination, except for when she hopes to con me into letting her go for the discriminate by sound.

Here is how it works. She goes out to the pile and just hits on an article, sort of willy-nilly. She picks it up and starts back with it, all the while keeping her head really low to the ground and not looking at me. When she is working the taste method she gets about half way back to me, stops, makes some smacking sounds with her mouth and spits it out. Then she goes back to the article left behind and picks it up. Smack! Smack! Smack! If it is the correct article she returns to me. If it is the wrong article, she puts it down and goes back to the first article.

Sometimes she picks up the wrong article, starts back with it, stops, spits it out, paws it, picks it back up and takes it back to the original spot. Once there she spits it out, paws and tastes the correct article, picks it up, spits it out. Kicks the taboo article away, picks up the correct article and brings it back to me. Go figure that one out, I think it is really interesting to watch her working.

Then there are the times when I think I must have screwed up during the previous session, because I know darn good and well she is waiting for even the tiniest little sound of praise. Those are the times when I say she working by sound rather than scent. She is so close to putting the pieces together now, it is hard to not work her every couple of hours or so.

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I put an ecollar on Tyler for the first time today and then got so busy with other stuff that I never did get around to doing any training with it. So tomorrow will be

the day

for him. He is now so sure he is a Doberman that I am not the least bit concerned about his level of self-confidence.