I love that last few seconds where he leaps into your arms with such enthusiasm. :-)

Oh man, after seeing this, Elsa and I are adding much more toy work! I want the leap for joy!  He Loves You!

Sorry, Forrest, again  a week passed and I had Only twice 15 minutes to read and watch the instructions. But once at least during the night. So I will keep this short,make this email fly. Hope it will arrive. The electricions  will be here Saturday too. So probably no chance to send vids, unless they diasappear early enough. In the worst case can I load up Sunday too?

I'll send you  what I can do, out of the mempry more or less. Sorry for the mess.

Christina

So sorry, posted in the wrong thread, don't know why.

This was a joy to watch.  Made my day!  

What a dog!

Loving the leap at the end! "Love you mummy, boing!"

Emily, I'm terrible for getting back so late on this...

A few thoughts:

You mentioned in a DQ thread that he's stuck on eyes without movement. Here he looked like he was nailing the eyes (as you knew) but that you didn't attempt movement. I'm sure you have been trying in your sessions. I'll see if you've got another video posted of it.

One thing you might try (if you haven't already) is putting that movement on the perch. Toy has a tendency to change the experience. Dogs get more 'stalky' for toy (as you see in Fal's body language at :33... so I'll make sure that I've got good energy up in heel. Part of the ability to do this is by practicing some more dynamic luring work to set the expectation of how the dog should carry their energy in heel. 

For Fal, you might revisit getting him onto the lure and going into movement (with food) and rewarding for the expression/strut you want. I'm not sure what that will look like for him but considering his circumstance I'm sure it will be about allowing him to find what's comfortable. Then, we can begin fading food help (which you're already doing by fading the food hand and using an overhead hand target when needed but not allowing the direct contact). Aside from that we're teaching things like you are here - to ignore the hand and focus on the face. However, I might recommend using the hand target to get him moving in heel and then try and fade it away as you're moving. He may remember this focus piece work and stay in position. Then mark and reward (I cover this stage with food).

Aside from that, teach toy play (which you have). Once he's not dependent on the hand/food lure to start or maintain the onset of movement in heel, I'll switch to toy. The hope is that he expects to provide the moving energy and the toy only increases expression/attitude. 

I'm not sure this is making exact sense, but my thought is that I'd get him into movement first (facilitated by food, find his stride, proof the focus pieces) and once he's comfortable and clear, add toy. 

You could also take the toy to the touchpad and do the same shaping work you did with food. This will show him a known picture and perhaps loosen him up easier as he's accustomed to turning on the perch now.

You've got so many great pieces in place. I just don't want to see him get stalking for the toy if we incorporate it too quickly - before his movement and expression are in place.

Does this make some sense? Let's talk through it.

It makes sense and already where my head went. I have a 15min vid of me tooling around with all the pieces. I went back to the perch, food to the left, and worked the movement with me, got flow and then transitioned to hand target out of reach on flat. Got some good reps and then thought, what if... so I went to "choose to heel" to figure out his rhythm and what his final heel might look like. I need to do more experimenting, but I'm pretty sure it's going to involve a bounce.

He's had some back spasms so I've had to limit our training this week, paired with giving a workshop in TX, I've been light on the training.

I'll get you an edit of the 15m vid in the next day or so.