the sheltiechick blog

Shaping is awesome

Do you ever get really excited when training something when you see that ah-ha moment take place?  I know how shaping works.  I’ve done it over and over and over again.  I’ve taught people how to do it and watched them shape their dogs.

But I just got ridiculously excited shaping Payton!  We are doing perch work, and the last time he was on the perch, I was telling people “he obviously gets the idea of moving his back feet and keeping his front feet in place – but he’s doing like a dance, one step left and one step right and scooting around back and forth all at once really quickly.”  My mom says to me, “Well, how are you going to fix that?”
“Right now, I’m only going to click for an obvious step to the left,” I said.

So tonight we got the perch out again and I did exactly that… and when he started stepping left clearly over and over and over and all the way around the perch I got so excited I almost started crying. I had to run and get my mom to show her, and of course when I tried it again he was getting stuck in his little dance again, LOL, BUT HE WAS DOING IT… I swear!!

And I felt like SUCH a dork being so excited.

Dog training dork.  That’s me.