Rolling, rolling, rolling...

Langley's been having a rough week. There have been multiple dogs in the house that he's never met and the 3rd of this bunch is actually staying put - our new foster boy, Samish.  All this change was enough to stress Langley out and for Langley more anxiety equals less focus.

In spite of his current short attention span, we are continuing to work on training exercises which teaches him to work with his humans and to look to them for guidance in situations where he feels unsure.

In his true over the top smart dog form he learned roll over with a lure the first time we tried it. We had to go slow with the lure and he was really doing it to follow that treat rather than  understand I wanted him to roll over.  That's okay though since that's how you get started with many tricks. That was the day before yesterday and we only did it 3 times before cutting the session off.  Then yesterday when we went back to it, instead of the hesitant roll, he knew exactly what I was going for when my hand started to move past the side of his head and over he went like a pro as you can see in the video.  Again we cut this off after a few rolls and lots of praise since I want our training sessions to always be a fun part of his day that he looks forward to.

Our next step will be to perfect this roll by slowly removing the lure from the trick and replacing it with a visual cue.  With the speed that Langley learns that may happen tomorrow. :)