Glory starts longe line work

This is two sessions combined into one post. I had Glory at handling class on Monday night and she is pretty out of control. She is 4 months old now. She will be in a show in two months and I would like her to be a bit more presentable than she is at the moment. Time to get some training started.
So Tuesday evening I did quite a lot with her....possibly too much for her age but we'll break it up more in the future. I did some fun retrieves with her in the shelter at first and let her keep the bumper for a bit so that she did not feel that I was going to snatch her prize away from her. She is on a leash for this so that I can control her a bit. Did a few sits as well but boy she does that very quickly...with no distractions of course (although Addie was in a crate in the shelter too). Next I put her up on the table and did some casting with her....and she takes the directions well. I have to tie her up while I load the food bowls but I am working on having her wait and look at me and watch the cast over before I let her get the treat. It is going well.
I was using a clicker to do the sit and the stand but I got better results without it. The clicker got her too wound up and I would like her to be calmer rather than crazier, so for now I'll just do it with praise. So we did a lot of sits and some stands and it went very well.
After that I took her outside (in the driveway) and wearing a slip collar we started to do the longe line work with her. I did 20 minutes and she was starting to pay more attention at the end. I only did it in a straight line going back and forth instead of a square or a triangle because doing those would have taken Glory and I out to the road and so far she has never been out there and I don't want her to think that she can go out there. As soon as the snow goes she has to be trained to the invisible fence. She will be the perfect age for that when the snow goes.
I did another 25 minutes on longe line over at the farm this am and the horses were there. She was initially pretty spooked by them and was whining a bit but through the session her anxiety decreased and she was sticking pretty close to me. Her attention increased through the session and right now she is passed out at my feet. I am going to let her snooze for a bit and then do some more table work with her. This evening is members night so I am going to take her with me but not to the class. I will just do about 20 minutes more of longe line work with her instead.
My goal is to take her right through Koehler novice program and then to blend her over to Connie Cleveland's training style and we'll see where we go from there.

training Glory on Wed Jan 20

I did much the same today with Glory. But this time I clicked her for sitting in the center of the table and then sent her 'over' to the food bowl. It went very well.
I tried to do some free stacking with her on the ground but she was so focused on the food that I got little done with her. So I did several sits and stands on the table. That went much better and I added the words stand, sit and stack. I hard stacked her and clicked brief stack stays. That went so well that she was starting to stand with the hand signal.
I ended the session with 4 or 5 fun retrieves with a toy....letting her have it for a bit before tossing it out again for her.
She enjoyed the training and it is fun to watch how quickly she picked everything up.
I did not take her to members night because I didn't think there was much to gain. Instead I took Addie who desperately needs more Utility work although she was remarkably good tonight in spite of having about 3 months off.

training Glory this evening

I went out again this evening and did some work with stacking, attention and retrieving the bumper. Everything went very well with all of that. I put her on the table again and did lots of sits and stands. I want her to have a bit of a head start on stand for conformation and some free stacking on the ground so that was why we were doing stand.
I then did lots of sits in the center of the table, getting her to actually sit and then sending her with a hand cast and command over to get some yummy turkey out of the bowl. She likes it and we had a good time doing it.

training glory

Up till now this little girl has had fun retrieves using bumpers, toys, pigeons and ducks, long walks with the other dogs, lots of learning her name and coming back for a treat. She does not know sit, or down or anything else. Our focus has been on a happy well adjusted retriever.
Last night she went to her first handling class and we worked on attention.
Today I put her on my new training table...a 16 foot long table to train lots of things at my height. A cable runs along so that she can't get off of it and my hands are free to help her.
So we started with sit on the table and I started with a clicker and man did she learn that fast.
I also added food in bowls to the ends of the table and with her sitting in the middle, I can start to teach her casting over. That worked very well. This is something new for me too so it is a bit of an experiment but so far I like it. It will be nice when the time comes to do the force fetch as well.