Slacker Training with Epic – Duration at a Distance
Here’s Epic working on a Pedestal while Ron whips up some Turkey Dogs à la Pawsitive Vybe. This is what I like to call Slacker Training. Freeshaping and capturing the environment without all of the formal training.
This is a typical slacker training session. Epic has had four or five formal Pedestal for duration sessions over the course of the last couple days, and Ron is capitalizing on the hot behavior in this freeshaping session.
Notice that cookies are delivered silently with no marker. This is important as the state of being is what is captured in this exercise — the state of being up on the Pedestal — marking triggers an understanding of Action and can be counter productive while training.
Loot is being tested rather harshly. He lives for the Pedestal and is being asked to lie down on the floor. Notice that Loot is being cued and Epic is not. This is serving as a proofing session for Loot’s down behavior in the presence of multiple working dogs, a skill we have not worked in some time.
LaVerne, the cat, is just shopping…
