I had my first private with my new instructor last weekend and she gave me some good pointers for working through a few of Cohen's trouble spots. I was a bit overloaded with information and feel a bit overwhelmed though. And of course there's nothing like an outside perspective to point out problems that I'd not even really seen myself yet.
My favourite take-away from the lesson was how placement of reward was going to help my issue with Cohen lagging off the line. She had me have Cohen jump up to get her reward after a step or two of heeling. Almost immediately I'm seeing more enthusiasm and am quite happy with our progress. It's too soon to call anything solved, but I feel like I have a good idea of how to work through the issue. We've been doing lots of very brief sessions of fun heeling, and Cohen seems to be enjoying herself a lot.
We're going to be joining an Open Trial Prep class, despite us not quite being ready for it. The instructor seemed to really like Cohen, and I have high hopes for her going forward.
My favourite take-away from the lesson was how placement of reward was going to help my issue with Cohen lagging off the line. She had me have Cohen jump up to get her reward after a step or two of heeling. Almost immediately I'm seeing more enthusiasm and am quite happy with our progress. It's too soon to call anything solved, but I feel like I have a good idea of how to work through the issue. We've been doing lots of very brief sessions of fun heeling, and Cohen seems to be enjoying herself a lot.
We're going to be joining an Open Trial Prep class, despite us not quite being ready for it. The instructor seemed to really like Cohen, and I have high hopes for her going forward.