Positive Training - Working with a Sensitive Soul

We were out for sunrise this morning, which always makes my day better. No moose stood between us and seeing the glorious sunrise rays! Nonetheless, I insisted that Shyla held a tight heel next to my snow bike as we head into the forest just in case some wild animal was on our path.

When we made it to the sunrise rays, Shyla was wide-eyed and beautiful.

We did a few recalls right away - we do that every day to get her mind in gear for the rest of our ride. Shyla was leaping for joy in the middle of the recalls!

She awes me with her spontaneous Olympian leaps that are completely fueled by joy!

Although Shyla is mostly a boisterous and confident dog when she and I are out in the forest alone, a cute aspect of her "sensitivity" remains. I sometimes try to have her do a "stay" out of sight of me. In this case, it was supposed to be behind a big boulder.

Today, Shyla sneaked so that she could peek at me from behind the boulder while she was supposed to be doing a "stay" behind it. It was so cute that I could barely bring myself to put her back in the position where I'd asked her to stay. It touches my heart that she would rather not be out of sight of me.

I did ask her to redo that out-of-sight stay although I made the "stay" short so she wouldn't be too stressed out. Then we had a play session as a reward. I've been working to build the "value" of play and toys as rewards, and it's truly been working. She now sees a short game of tug and then fetch as being as good as food for her reward!

I cannot believe how far Shyla has come - from a cowering fearful dog to the one you see in the photo above! I've used nothing but positive training with her, and she loves training. In positive training, almost everything is a "game" where your dog is earning fun rewards like food or play.

Because the training is so fun, we are always working on new tricks, and we practice "nosework" searches daily. I hope to make another video of our nosework games very soon. It's the most fun thing I've taught my dogs in recent years!