First dare on single track

I went out to the trails with only M'Opus today. It was a little too late to profit from morning chill, therefore hotter than ideal to run a dog. I thought that since I could expect Mopus to be slower, I would dare some single track....Wow! I didn't expect such training benefit from running on a single track.
On the narrow twisty trail, M'Opus was very attentive to what was going on behind; more than ever, I felt her attentive to my commands and directions. When we came to intersections she was clearly looking for instructions. I think that short runs on single track might become part of our training, I think there is an opportunity there to reinforce good communication and response between me and my dog.

M.E. Fhast teaches me the lesson

M.E. Fhast showed me something interesting today. I was working on the whaooo with her. All we do is run together and when I say Whaooo ooo we both STOP! And reward. It's working really well, she has figured out that the Whaooo ooo is a stop. Eventually I will delay stopping myself and leave her the first initiative on the command. Anyway, that was not the interesting part. Once in a while we get this strange reaction form our dog and wonder what on earth went through there head. Most often I think the reactions have a good explanation. On one of our STOP! M.E. bucked, gave me this worried look and didn't come to my hand for her reward. ???? Quick play back in my head...realization! My command came out wrong. I use a looong, extended  whaaaoooo ooo to indicate a stop but this time, by mistake, from the excitement about my dog picking up so well, I gave a dry Wo! ...well that sounds the hell of a lot like a No! M.E. is one of those dogs that wants to do well, doing wrong upsets her. Doing wrong and not knowing what has really put her off. I sat down, comforted her a little and we did one more run and stop but my mistake had upset her spirit, not worth keeping going. Lesson learned, next time I'll do better.

 

Working on Waoo 

M.E. Fhast introduction to the pulk shafts

M.E is a fun little dog. I find her much easier to work with than her sister, M'Opus. Her body languages says it all, she is expressive and rarely leaves me guessing about her level of comfort. I like this video as I can see so much "dog talk" in it. M.E. sets her own rate of progress by backing off, releasing her stress and trying again, she's awesome.

While I thought Mopus was much more confident, I'm actually finding out that she just expresses herself very differently than M.E and that I'm better at reading M.E.Fhast. M'Opus freezes and demonstrates her stress through very little motion.

M'Opus first contact with the pulk shafts

This first contact with the pulk shafts went well. With a lot of treats, I started by having Mopus move around them, and interact with the new object. As she doesn't seems bothered we moved on to the next step, moving the shafts around her. I was expecting much more reactions from Mopus but she seemed to be dealing with it fine . Next, I hitched her and started having her move around. M'opus gave me good hopes I might have a willing pulk dog.



Edit: This first session went very well indeed but made me over confident about Mopus comfort. It might be worth following the later development. On a following session, M'Opus panicked in the shafts. That brought us back to square one...actually worst than square one as now she apprehends the shafts.