So I just watched @Lynn May and Leto's wonderful sendaway in her post yesterday and it jogged my memory that today is Thursday. Challenge time! Funnily enough I filmed this earlier in the week - it was always going to be week 7's challenge! Go and check out Lynn's vid if you've not seen it yet. If you can try to scroll back through old posts, @Gary Martin posted a video of a phenomenal send away too. It has forever stuck in my mind as being the dream picture one day! What is quite cool is that Lynn has filmed the beginning bit - just sending your dog to a bowl of food from a distance. I also started here. Remember: - the distance isn't the important bit to begin with - you want your dog really focussed on that bowl and super eager to run to it. - Restraint builds desire - create some eagerness by holding the collar or harness before releasing - Make sure you have the behaviour solid before you add the cue I've added in a target since, which I have also rewarded separately with food and play. You can combine the target with the food bowl so that you can eventually fade the bowl out and the dog will still run to the target. I used a contact mat but you could also use a lightweight fence post or a cone. Try to place the bowl so that they need to contact the mat to eat the food. In the video I filmed earlier in the week, I actually have her dinner and I'm "premacking" this sendaway. She clearly knows I have the bowl of food but she gotta go do that send out to access it! So it makes the exercise even more challenging. The complete sendaway (for UK working trials anyway) requires a sit or down once they've run out to the correct spot. Don't try and teach this in combination with the above stuff. Work on just downing on the mat/next to the cone in close proximity to your dog, then work at being a litte farther from them as you give them the cue to down. Eventually you can combine the two behaviours. I found this tricky with Aster. She's not a natural downer and I had no idea what I was doing haha but if I can do it you guys can ❤️

The moment you've all been waiting for! Well.... @Lauren Edwards and @Sarah Green anyway😂 Sorry it has taken so long. See how you get on with this exercise, the focus shift. I get the feeling a lot of pet dog trainers will be drilling owners to reward eye contact from their dog. This isn't a bad thing at all, but can your dog also be cued to look at something else? Can you ask them to switch between the two? Many sports require a dog to be able to focus it's attention on something other than the handler - in protection work this will be a decoy, for agility jumps or other obstacles, hunting dogs will be looking at game and herders at livestock. Most of them are highly rewarding things to be focused on! Teaching your dog to switch between focusing on you and focusing on a "source" of something good helps to balance engagement with disengagement. You can do this with food or toys. Here I'm revisiting this exercise with Aster after a long time of not training it! It definitely needs some work but you get the idea. Looking forward to your videos! ❤️https://youtube.com/shorts/BMDCceukCtQ?si=U3StJrYynqYI9li2

Continuing with a daily training & making good progress 😁 Doing more Sendaway training out on walks also to vary environment. Celebrating today as during good dog class a cyclist went across the field quite close & Freddie saw him but didn’t chase/lunge just looked back at me 🥳🥳🥳🥳 big win for me

With all the meeting up on Thursday the challenges completely went out of my head! Just in case you wanted another little ditty to work on this week, here's some pivots. Teach your dog two front feet on an object first - ideally larger than this upturned bowl to begin with. When they are happy with that, use a lure against the shoulder area to encourage your dog to step under and across with hind end. Just reward tiny steps first (mine have done a fair amount of this). Remember to work both directions!! https://youtu.be/v54h2Tk_79k?si=6ZSSNQxRSk-sPXdQ

This week I thought I'd give you something a bit more static and @Lauren Edwards requested some "mouth awareness" for Igor the shark so I thought better an object than a hand or finger 😂 I actually filmed a 2.5 min video for this to show how I would teach it, ending with an actual hold. It's OK but not the best as as per usual I'm off centre and a bit off camera for some of it 🤦‍♀️🙄. I'm useless at tech! But the last hold isn't too bad so I've cropped it out for you. I used a length of alcathene pipe here but I suggest you start with something your dog really likes to begin with and work up to more novel materials. If you want me to wax lyrical on how I would teach this/see longer version of the video then shout but otherwise, happy challenging! 🫡