Day 6: evening- Progress!!!

Wow, what a day. I went outside and created an enclosed training space with 2 ex-pens. We worked on "sit" which took him awhile to get (it's a behavior he usually only offers when he's not sure what you want and he's sort of sitting in submission). I saw the lightbulb go on! Soon we were doing it again and again and again. Hooray! So I moved to a new location, which distracted him a bit but he caught back up again. So we moved to another location, and did it some more. Each time you move to a new location you raise the bar a bit. All locations were in the back yard, all only slightly distracting (distractions included a breeze causing the sun umbrellas to rustle and move, background noises, etc).

So I sensed we were on a roll. At the same time, I didn't want to overwhelm him! It's a big training mistake to go too fast. I wanted to try him on my bike with the K9 Cruiser. I clipped him to the short light tether, and slowly walked the bike around the back yard, encouraging him. He was fine! We went out front, and I tried riding slowly. He was fine! We went around a bit in front of the house, and he was doing great (he goes fast!). On my bike I have a rear-mirror positioned to let me know if the dog is happily going as fast as the bike, or if he's falling back in position a bit. This alerts me before he falls into a position where he'd be pulled at all by the bike. He loved it. We went all the way around the block, with cars passing us and everything. The only hiccup came when a neighbor wanted to say hi to him and even though the man was 12 feet away, he started to pull back and panic. He asked to be held, and I held him and he was fine (but we did not move any closer to the man, I didn't want to undo all our progress to date by overwhelming him). We said goodbye and I clipped him back up and we went on our way. He really impressed me with his progress, and frankly he showed a lot resilience in the presence of huge SUVs passing us. Good boy!