🎉🎉 AWESOME job working on object retrieval with Miss Saffy!! 🐕‍🦺 Okay so the foundational “hold” is fantastic!! She’s doing really great with willingly holding the object in the front of her mouth until she hears the “yes” marking cue 👏 The straw, finger, and credit card all look fantastic!! The goal now is for her to become more of an active participant and actually start grasping the object herself instead of waiting/tolerating placement into her mouth. So let’s have her do the same exercise I did in that video with GRiZ. Basically, mark and reward the MOMENT she even reaches toward the cup/object. Use those high-value food rewards and make sure she’s hungry. Then just present the cup to her. If she reaches forward even just a little bit — YES and reward that immediately. If she completely ignores it and just sits there staring at you 😂 take the cup away and present it again. Do that about 3 times. Then turn your back away from her for a second to communicate “if you’re not gonna participate, I’m not gonna participate either” lol. As for the wording — I usually use “grab” for specific retrieval objects I want brought to me. “Get it” tends to stay more in the playful toy category for me. I personally would not combine the two because we want the retrieval behavior to stay really precise and gentle (front of the mouth, careful hold, controlled delivery) versus toy play where she can grab and interact with it however she wants 😊 She’s making REALLY nice progress!! You can absolutely see the little mental clicks starting to happen, she’s right on track 🫵🆒😎🐕‍🦺

@Julie Kelley definitely and the object retrieval training up to this point honestly has not been very fun lol… The finger hold is more of a tolerance and desensitization type of training, so not real fun for us humans or doggos lol. Also very advanced training, sometimes this process takes like up to six months so you really are progressing amazingly!! This next part should be a little more fun and once it actually clicks, you’ll appreciate all this boring foundational training 😝

YAYYYY Daisy girl!!! 🐕‍🦺👏 I love this. This is SUCH a great idea to get your baseline and your “before” video so you can really see where you’re starting from and compare progress later on. And honestly she already has such a solid foundation that there really is not a whole lot of improving she needs lol. She looks really great overall!! A couple things I noticed are exactly what you already pointed out — we want a little more check-in and attention on you and a little less checking in with the “pack” hahaha. Which honestly is super common and honestly kind of sweet 😂 but obviously for working purposes we want more eyes on you. Another thing is the leash pressure. Ideally when she’s in the correct heel position the leash should stay loose. So if you’re feeling tension on the leash, that’s basically your indicator that she’s drifted out of position a bit. I’m a big fan of balanced training, so when she IS in the right position and being attentive, praise praise praise!! “Good girl,” mark and reward, and keep that food pouch handy so you’re ready to reinforce those really nice moments of engagement and focus. Then if she starts drifting, going toward people, looking around the store instead of focusing on you, etc., you can use light leash guidance/corrections with either the flat collar or martingale just as information — basically little bumpers letting her know “that’s not the position/behavior I’m looking for.” Then right back to praise and reinforcement when she makes the correct choice. Seriously though this all looks REALLY good and she has a fantastic foundation already 👏

AWWWW I love seeing pictures and hearing pup-dates of cute cute Harley!! 🥹🐕‍🦺 Look at her go all confident even after having a long break!! That is seriously so awesome to see. And I LOVE that alert picture 😭 she’s so precious. Sounds like she did an amazing job settling, refocusing, and working through all the distractions around her. The fact that she could greet a couple people and then come right back to focusing on you is HUGE 👏 Great job Harley girl!! And great job to you too for listening to her and balancing the outing so thoughtfully. Thanks for sharing!! 💕

@Laura Rauscher WELCOME Laura and Miss Daisy!! 🥳🐶💛 We’re so excited to have you here!! Daisy is SUCH a cutie, and this is a great space to learn service dog tasks and training skills that will help support you the most throughout your journey together 🐕‍🦺 Also… golf cart rides near the beach sounds like a pretty amazing life for a dog hahaha 🌴☀️ Looking forward to seeing your videos and following along with your training progress. Thank you so much for being here!! 😊

@Laura Rauscher very cool!!! 🐳

I like https://activedogs.com/ because they have a variety of options 🐕‍🦺 A few teams also have custom vests made from vendors on Etsy… @Kenzie Carlson who did you get Atlas’ vest from?

@Kenzie Carlson thank you! And @Laura Rauscher i also tagged you in a post Kenzie mad about vests in the ASA SD group 😎