Oh you know just me crying about Ryker and our relationship one day and moving to praise and giddy on the next.
Despite all that I overthink and worry over. We are starting to have more and more brilliant training sessions.
I've been working hard to change how I approach training sessions and working with Ryker. Praise and play actually are very high motivators for Ryker. Higher than Aayla. Probably higher than food is for him. He wants to be goofy and bouncy, so let's be goofy and bouncy.
I think with Aayla I did so much more goofy play with everything I taught her for the first three years of her life. I had just wanted a hiking buddy to train tricks with. Then I got into sports and figured that out. I had so much I taught incorrectly or sloppily that I had to go back and retrain a lot of things.
So I didn't want to make that mistake with my next dog. But I swung too far in the other direction, being too serious about training the little details. While I was trying to train everything with positive reinforcement and shaping, it was too much for Ryker in too serious of an environment. He found no joy, then got stressed and it all unravelled.
So here is to finding the middle ground. Focusing on foundations and working towards correct skills while incorporating a lot of play, goofiness and fun. More toy and play rewards, less food rewards.
