For breakfast we go to the screen room. We work first on Sit. I lure a Sit and then wait for an offering, but she offers Down. I lure a couple more, but she’s obviously confused, so I switch from trying to reinforce GETTING into a Sit to reinforcing the actual Sit. So I lure her into a Sit and then reward that Sit ten times. Let her get up and lure the Sit again and reinforce X10. THEN she starts offering Sits and I go back to clicking and tossing the treat so she gets up to offer me another Sit.
Then we switch to the dumbbell and work just on getting a hold. I mentioned before that she likes movement behaviours better than stationary ones. The hold goes well, but a couple of times she looks behind her and goes to touch a bit of leaf to see if maybe that will work. Nope, back to the hold. It’s hard to click at the right time even when I’m asking for several grabs because she’s so fast. She’s like a chicken. She doesn’t have to shift her weight or anything to make a huge motion, so one second she’s doing THIS and the next second she’s doing THAT with nothing in between. Finally I notice that when she’s serious about leaving her mouth on the bar, she looks up into my eyes.
Then we’re done with breakfast, but it’s lovely sitting in the screen room so I stay there a bit. She offers me a Sit and I’m out of food so I hand-wrestle her. Then she does something marvellous. She goes to the door and looks out. Then she turns and looks at me. Then she looks out the door again. I ask if she wants to go outside. She perks up her ears and comes partway to me, then runs back to the door. Clever little tad, I’m thinking. So I get up, open the door and let her out. THEN the marvellous part. She runs 8′ out into the yard, then stops, turns around, and stares at me. “Hey, ma, you have to come too!” When I step out and shut the door, she runs full steam into my leg, bounces off, rips twice around the yard, then grabs my pantleg and I get to drag her growling and pulling all the way around the yard. Have I mentioned how googly I am about this small creature?