Unbelievably Gemini is now 7 months old. Just before her 7 month birthday some fiendish dog decided to possess Gem. Almost overnight my little ready to play puppy decided that she had other things on her list of Fun Things To Do and working with me was not one of them. Admittedly I went into my own personal tail spin and lamented what I'd possibly done that had created this behavior. After seeing a trainer/friend and biting my nails over his diagnosis of the situation he delivered the news: an acute case of puppy adolescence. The treatment basis would be to use a bit more creativity to maintain connection with Gemini and realize that its normal for things to fluctuate and change. Oh ya, don't lose too much sleep over it especially as I'll need to be on top of my game.
As fate would have it, I got an email about Susan Garrett starting a new Recallers Class (now that's good timing) and I came across some excellent materials about goal setting--how to set appropriate goals, how to measure them, and really how important the entire process is for moving forward especially when you are at a challenge point. Clearly Gemini's adolescence is a challenge for me.
A couple days ago I went to the training field with my list of goals for that training session. Gem's big sister Twig had her own set of goals which looked something like this: tighten up serpentines and German turns (can use same set up), full teeter work looking for drive to end and include difficult entrances. Gemini's list looked something like this: Increased drive to tunnel/curved tunnel, single jump cik/cap (which I call Zig/Zag) with drive to jump, into and out of turn, and figure 8 between 2 jumps using zig/zag. Gemini apparently failed to read her training goals for this session. Tunnel sends went well. I was surprised that she didn't want to work for her fuzzy toys but instead wanted Twig's squeeze tube of liverwurst. Well ok I can throw a squeeze tube. When it came time to work her zig/zag she looked at the jump at 4" and stared. Then she tried to stand on top of the bar, walk around the jump, lie down, give me a paw, bite at my shoe laces, an in general do anything but her zig turn -- a skill that she has done well for a month! None of her toys worked and no treats helped her to see the light so I put her up and worked Twig some more. Gem was going nuts wanting to get back in the action so I decided to redo my goals and see if she would just chase me and a toy thrown over the jump. Ahh success. In 30 secs her world was magically different and she could do full speed single jump wraps with tight turns! I abandoned the rest of her goals and ended the session by playing with the girls. Who knows what was up with her?
Recallers 3.0 hasn't started yet. In fact registration doesn't start until tomorrow. Her mini lessons leading up to the start have class have been very thought provoking for me. Much of it involves problem solving by using games. Aren't adolescents experts at playing games???? She has outlined a 10 step process to help us employ games in our training and she has made it clear how important record keeping is in getting it all to work. So I am going to step up my game and use this blog as my training journal summary site. I can only hope that class begins soon!
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