Sometimes he really does pay attention...

I'm still working on getting reliability of behaviors from Skipper. The hardest thing with training right now is the fact that he has no wait period with his behaviors. Stay has been a challenge, but once he really gets it I know it will save our training. Right now he thinks every behavior I ask for only needs to be performed or held for a millisecond. Sit is a butt-bounce off the floor unless I add a stay at the end of it. Same for down. Spin is a lightening-quick whirl my eyes can barely follow. Shake is a violent outburst of one paw, quickly repeated if I don't click fast enough.

Funny and fortunate thing is I've finally gotten to a point where I enjoy this. Once I was able to finally let go of how I'd expected his learning process to go and learned how to flow with his behavior training became a lot of fun.

Quenya is so easy to train, and she is really one of those dogs that works with her human in a "Mom, I'm going to pay the closest attention possible to make sure I do this absolutely right and the way you want me to!" kind of way.

Skipper is more along the lines of "Woo, this is awesome! Give me a treat for this! No? What do you mean no? What if I do it again, and faster? What if I do it this way? Or that way? Okay how about this way AND even faster??! UGH. Human, what do you mean this isn't what you want? Fine, I'm just going to sit here and stare at you until you realize how worthy of treats that behavior I just offered was."

I can't really dictate our training sessions, I have to let him show me what he's in the mood to do. I thought that would mean we'd have to skip some behaviors, but with time I've realized that he'll eventually be in the mood to learn both the slow behaviors and the fast ones. The behaviors that require prolonged mental focus and the ones that can be performed in total ditz-mode.

After talking to some other terrier owners, both of the Rat and other varieties they have all confirmed that the one-year age mark is particularly difficult. I've been assured he'll mature into a much more confident, partnership-oriented dog than I'm seeing now. And for now I've learned to notice when Skipper is really trying to work with me. While rarer than I'd hoped, seeing them there now assures me that we can build on those moments to create a successful future.

I know I update this in every post, but I'm just so excited: Skipper and I start nosework this Sunday!! In three days! Superduper exciting!