Progress is progress, no matter how small

Progress with a dog like Chopper is small. If you aren't careful you can miss it.  Lucky for us all I have a bit of a neurotic streak and it comes into good use here.

We have been trucking along with the hand targeting, where I call him and he touches his nose to my right hand. I click this behavior and treat.  He loves doing this game, and will stay outside looking at me when he wants to play it and I haven't initiated instead of following me inside. I always oblige, I mean, who am I to deny a dog of fun?  He doesn't always want to play it, sometimes he'll go outside, run a lap or two around the yard with his tail wagging, then bound up the short set of stairs with enthusiasm to the back door.

Today we met with a local dog trainer.  She had a lot of really great suggestions, more then I can remember (thank goodness she's sending me things in writing), but one thing I think we'll be making a regular game is a scent game.  Since Chopper is a scent hound he is wired for smelling things out.  The implications of this are he is both very skilled at it, and enjoys it.  So one thing we do is toss a small handful of treats out where they can fall to the ground and let him smell them out. When he comes back click and treat.  I hadn't been marking and rewarding  (with food, I'd been ear scratching) when he'd come back to me without me calling, but as it turns out I should be rewarding it *more*.  I am glad for the extra assistance, and I feel good about learning more things to try.

In other news, Chopper has gotten enough confidence to play with his toys more.  The racoon toy we got him has a water bottle inside of it, which means it can be loud and scary.  But after a brief moment of fear with the first crunch he sat down and starting gnawing it like crazy.  Then later he got up and grabbed another toy and took it to his blanket and was playing with the two toys at once. So cute.

I took advantage of the good mood he was in and clicker treated him into the living room. I want him to start being comfortable in other rooms of the house that we use more.  I got him all the way in the middle of the room before he decided he'd had enough and went back to his blanket.  Progress is progress, no matter how small.

Here's a video of Chopper the coonhound enjoying his 'coon toy: