Poor showing at breakfast. We start with Eye Contact, she can’t give me more than 2 seconds without glancing at my right hand. I switch the clicker to my right and the kibble to my left, and we manage to get up to 4 seconds before she starts whining and moves immediately to yelping at me. I get 10 Eye Contact for 1 second rapidfire, and we move on.
I toss out each of the three dumbbells and she brings each of them back on two clicks immediately. On the second throw of the metal one, she brings it back, sits, and holds it while I sit thinking about what to do about my jaw on the floor. Finally my brain returns and I click, but I could just as easily have reached out and touched it. Woohoo!
The other objects – toothbrush, clicker, pen, felt pen, small Flexilead, collar – she doesn’t do as well on. With the dumbbells I could toss them and she’d run out to pick them up, so I could afford to wait to click her turning towards me with the db in her mouth. With the other objects I can’t afford that. If I don’t click her initial approach, she turns away and lies down. She had to get up to pee twice during the night and I think either she’s tired or she’s not feeling well. She seems sluggish and mildly disinterested (though to outward appearance she seems to be well into working the click. I just get a feeling of general minor unwellness). If I give her 10X for the approach, she’s able to go on from there to pick up the object and eventually get it back to me. The harness ring is last, I’m not expecting much at all, but today she treats it like everything else – 10X for the approach, then she picks it up and starts bringing it back. And we leave it at that.