We spent almost the whole session yesterday working on that trick. Having had good luck shaping her front feet onto the stool, I switched to shaping her to touch my feet with her front feet. Unfortunately I hadn't noticed how roughly she was "touching" the stool. Yikes. I tried to hold still, but she hit my knee first and clawed down from there. If I held the click in the beginning, waiting for a (my) toe touch, or waiting for a lighter touch, she'd decide she was wrong and go looking for something else to do, so I gritted my teeth and clicked the raking.

Then last night I bought some new music and immediately found a song that would make a GREAT freestyle routine, especially for this dog - Queen's We Will Rock You. I got so excited I played it about 50 times and while I was working out some moves, I suddenly found myself dancing. Wow! My new meds are working! Don't know if I'll ever get to having an actual routine again, but it was sure fun letting my feet think about it.

We started today with the paw touch again, and overnight she'd figured out how to touch much more gently, and to keep working it while I held off for even lighter touches. By holding my foot high off the floor I was able to start clicking for the paw lift BEFORE she actually hit my foot.

We moved on to L2 Communication. Step 1 is the dog backing up. We got that, but not on cue yet. Step 2 is moving out of my space - no problem. Step 3 - same but always to the left. Got it. Step 4 - untangles leash from around (husband) - check. Step 5, untangles leash from front leg. We have the leg lift in response to the leash cue, but we don't have the assured untangle yet.

And then we moved on to… holy cow, L2 Homework. We're at the end of the Level! We're not, of course, DONE the Level. We still have lots of duration and cueing to work on, but it's very encouraging to have gone through everything and seen that we're not going to have any serious trouble with anything. What a good puppy! What a FUN puppy!