More heeling help

Phoebe finishes right wonderfully and heels nicely by my side. If I want to do rally-O she needs to finish left. SHE HATES IT. This has to be the hardest thing I've every tried to teach her. At first it looked promising, I used hand targeting to get her to do it and then morphed it into a hand signal, all was going well. Then when she was doing this well I would use the command I chose ("finish") followed by the hand signal. By this time is was probably the second session. It started well again. I was starting to say the command, pause and see what she'd do and then give the hand signal if she didn't do it. She did it sometimes with the word (probably guesses) and sometimes she didn't and waited for the hand signal. but then She started getting iffy. I'd say the cue followed by the hand signal (since she ignored the cue)and she'd stand there trance like. I'd say her name so she'd snap out of it and ask again and she'd do it. Then she got worse, she would do a different command (that I am teaching at the same time in an attempt to keep her from getting bored, "Front") and I'd walk away and ask again (switched to using hand signal right after the word without pausing in between again) and she'd just sit there, she ended up shutting down.

It's as if she totally forgot the hand signal, she will sit and watch me do it and then sit there without moving. I don't know if she really doesn't get it or is just bored and doesn't like this command. Should I maybe cut down to only doing it a handful of times per session?

Another question, when I was saying the cue and pausing before using the hand signal she was doing what I wanted...mostly. Instead of walking past my left leg and turning around to face forward she'd walk to the front of my leg, spin around to face forward and back up into position. How picky are judges about that, she does get in the correct position just in her own *special* way With the hand signal she would do it more proper but it was because she was following my hand as far back as it would go because I started with hand targeting. Do you think I just moved forward too fast? she usually picks things up SO quickly, I taught her two commands up to the point where she understood the hand signal perfectly in one session, she's usually very quick, it's just this one.

Any advice would be appreciated.

It does sound like you moved too fast. I find that once they learn one of the finishes, the other one is more difficult. It seems to confuse them to have to learn both, which is why if I don't need both (if I'm not doing rally) I only teach one of them.

As for how she does the finish, I don't understand the "walk to the front of my leg". Where is she when she starts the finish? If she's in a front position, she's already there. Walking past the left leg, turning and then coming up to heel makes it easier for them to get straight, but I teach a flip - it's pretty much the dog pivoting from front to heel, which is what it sounds like she's kinda doing and is perfectly acceptable, although I'm not sure about the backing up? I might not be understanding it completely. But if she's actually facing forward on your left and then taking steps backwards, that could lose a half point or a point. I'd really have to see it to say.

I understand what you're saying about her "special" version of finish - I worked with a dog who did it that way, too - but I don't know anything about Rally-O so I couldn't guess what a judge will think. Sorry.

As far as the rest. A trainer I worked with gave me some very good advice once. She said that when you're progressing a behavior, sometimes the behavior falls apart. Rather than spending a lot of time and effort "fixing" the behavior or figuring out why it's falling apart, it's often better just to start back at the point just before it started falling apart. So, with Pheobe, I'd start a session with simple hand touches, maybe work a little on just getting her to follow your hand again; it's easy enough and interesting enough that it should keep her engaged. Then work on the finish without saying the cue. All of this should take less than about 3 minutes... short sessions of each. Then maybe give her a break, and if she's ready, start throwing in the cue again.

I would not start fading out the hand signal for several sessions, for two reasons. One, that's the part where she started shutting down, so it would probably help to take that a little slower. And two, finish is a complicated behavior, and to teach it you're using a rather large hand signal (not being critical, that's the way I teach it too); so to fade the hand signal, I usually prefer to just make it smaller and smaller until she gets a better idea of what the behavior is.

Hope that makes sense.

Thanks guys, tomorrow I'll take it back a few notches.

Corgi, I'll try to explain what I mean. I ask her to come into heel at my left from a distance of a few feet at this point, once she can do that I'll have her do it from different positions including front. She walks up like she's gonna do it but right when she is in front of me she turns around so that she faces forward. At this point her rump is next to my leg, she's a few steps too far forward so she backs up until she is in the right spot. If I use the hand signal longer hopefully she'll get it since she did it pretty well when I was doing only the hand signal.