When A Training Session Doesn't Go Well

Last night we got to the park before teaching a lesson. I took out Griffin. He lined up to heel. I gave him some cream cheese. And he turned away.  I offered it to him immediately, he still refused.  We tried canned food.

I worked to get him tugging. Once I'm sure that it's a reinforcer...we can go back to training. But it wasn't going to be a reinforcer.

After the lesson, we tried again and he still wasn't interested. So we went home.

Not very much happened but...as always I added some things to my "To Train" list.

• Fix his -go-to-the-bathroom cue.  I think part of the problem was that he needed to....but was too distracted.
• Get him comfortable eliminating (quickly!) in various locations.
• Continue to increase the value of varied food and toy reinforcers.
• Do more sessions of getting out of the car to work for 1-2 min, back in to go to another location (usually a block away).

The work he did was actually quite nice. I was nervous about not having a way to reinforce the behaviors.  There is ALWAYS something happening... the behavior growing stronger or the behavior getting weaker. And I don't want my behaviors to get weaker!