My best articulation of what my brain was saying when I worked with Luna would sound like this:
~*~Oh my Gosh! Did you see that?! Did you see that!?! ~*~
-Cue clapping!
I clapped, I blew her kisses and I marveled at her innate openness to learning new things. Working with Luna felt more like a conversation I was having with a moderately adult human being. She brought a clarity with her into every training session that I rarely observe in dogs.
There was a stability and methodical ethic innate to who Luna was.
I needed to learn how to work with her as you need to learn with anyone. All teaching relationships present opportunities for us to become students of our dogs learning process. The surprise of Luna was how patient she was given her innate power. It felt like she had several options available to her that would have been self-reinforcing and she would choose to work with the human in most situations. For whatever reason that felt slightly surprising every time it happened.
I have our first practice session recorded!
You can see the seeds of her patience and attention. One of many reasons I love this exercise is the fluency we and our dogs acquire for being a team in the ‘everywheres’ of where our journeys take us. Her precision flickered and slipped a bit as she got older and used to sitting for treats in front of her humans. When it became a more inorganic position for her to maintain I figured out that it wasn’t her it was the practice she was doing with her family. So I adjusted my assumptions about her perfection,,,,for a bit;0)
It’s important to take a minute to think when you see a change in performance from a puppy. Changes in competency can reflect changes in reinforcement history. When we know this, we plan for the shift instead of reflexively working against or at young dogs.
Working with Luna gave me many opportunities to see what I was doing as I was working with her. I was able to (for whatever reason) think about the next few moves that could be taken and which one would probably be best for her.
Luna was social media beautiful. Thinking, practicing and teamwork were her favorite activities. She was, from very early on, very clear about what she could and could not do in a situation. Her progress as she matured was going to occur on her terms and within a family where off-property performances were rarely going to be required of her.
Not a springboard to competition obedience trials this was an invitation to do infinitely more practice and to grow not test her skills. I wanted to work with her abilities as she showed me she had abilities. The enemy of the good is getting blinded by the dog you either think you have, dream you have or really expect to have based on breed and breeding. At the beginning and ending of every day, Luna was herself and every day of her short life she was perfection because at the close of the day she was an optimist who trusted her family and who was ready to learn something new tomorrow.
I thought of how Luna we were teaching Luna skills almost like we were on the home field. Learning was completely safe and a regular practice at home. The plan was to extend the home field advantage to road games as well. Bear in mind, she was a Covid-Cusp puppy so with existing social weirdness and mandates that approach was especially helpful as it avoided Low to High shifts in distraction. Maybe we felt further justified in taking this approach given Covid when it is most likely the approach we would have taken anyway:-).
Copyright Emily Rogeness 2021
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