starting out

I have never been very good at blogging consistently, but have decided to try again. I think journaling about anything is a powerful tool and I just need to be more committed to doing it. I was reading over on Ferrah's blog about a song that popped into her head during training. I wasn't familiar with it so immediately went to youtube and found it.

The chorus of the song goes like this:
"You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-Between"

I think many times when I train I try so hard to get to the final product I don't take the time to accentuate the parts of the behavior that my dogs already know. So when I trained Rumi today I worked on accentuating the positive. With the go outs, I really focussed on how well he is bopping the go out gate gently (instead of taking the whole row of gates down ). And with his fronts I rewarded each one he got perfectly, starting with easy ones and progressing to some really hard ones. And I did not mess with any that were just in-between :)

I really enjoy working Rumi, because he will work all day long for me, trying his hardest to figure out what I want. If I can explain to him what it is I'm looking for, he will do it for me in a heart beat. I can't wait for the weather to break, the ice to melt, and be able to start working him on stock!

Today I am greatful for feeling better and having a room to train the dogs in, inside my house.