Griffin's Dilemma

Griffin has many really great competition behaviors.  His real-life, daily-use behaviors are getting a little...rusty.    In a training context we can do some very excessive "proofing" exercises and he is almost 100% successful. When he makes errors, it's often to move -away- from the things he really wants.

Yesterday we worked on his directed jumping.  First a few to see how he was doing. Then with someone else telling us which jump to take.   And then with some proofing exercises.  Initially I had a helper hold him (so no stay to break).  He perceived that as a recall exercise and blasted straight to me.  Once I left him on stays, he was great and then only missed about 2 out of 20 repetitions over the day.  We ended up with people running around the ring and taking the jumps, standing in interested positions, and carrying items through his ring.  He barely looked away from me.  

He can do most of his competition exercises with some fairly extreme distractions.  Yet I do not think he's ready to trial.   In the moment of excessive distractions, Griffin very much knows that it's a trick and he only works harder.  

Attention!

So what do we do?  Next week we'll do more repetitions with more subtle distractions.  We'll do more exercises or pieces before reinforcing.