A, B, C Articles

I have problems deciding where to place my articles.  I almost always see a circle with one or 2 in the middle at trials.  Should I always practice that?  Should I move the hot article around randomly?  Should I have a method?  Should I put it where she never looks, should I avoid putting it where she always seems to grab from if she can't find it?  All these choices and no clear answers.  I decided to change it up.  I'm going to arrange my articles in letter shapes.  I'm using more articles than called for in the trial.  Basically I use how ever many it takes.  A was yesterday and today was B. C will be tomorrow and should be easy!

She got the first one wrong.  :(  I had it up against the window, the top right corner of the B.  Video at the bottom of the post.

After getting it wrong the first time I said "Nope" and she went back and got the correct one. That part was very good because in the past if she got it wrong she'd refuse to go back to the pile and would instead trot around in cirlces, jump in the car if it was open and occassionally even try to go under the car if it was closed.  Way too much stress!  So I was very happy that she chose to give it another try!

When she got it right on the second  try I gave her a pat and a good girl and put her away then brought her out later and tired again and she did it right.  The reason I did it that way is I think this (getting it right only after first getting it wrong) is what lead to our complete nuclear meltdown.  I tried to "fix" that but instead I put too much pressure on her and she wanted nothing to do with articles.  So I can't have her doing it wrong, but I don't want to shut her down, and I don't want a huge reward for basically doing it wrong.  I hope the difference in a pat on the had and a huge party will help her realize she should do it correctly the first time.  And the lack of correction will help her not have stress so she doesn't accidentally do it wrong to begin with. 

I do not think she does it wrong the first time "on purpose" but I think she just grabs one out of desperation, or perhaps somehow in her mind bringing back a non-scented one first is right.  So when I say I want her to figure out she should do it right the first time, I suppose I mean I am trying to help her realize that bringing back an unscented one first isn't good enough for a huge reward.  She's not "out to get me" or trying to "mess with me."  I know that.  I do believe dogs do what they find rewarding and if that happens to make it seem like they are messing with us then we just have to deal with it and train harder.  I don't THINK Dottie finds it rewarding to bring back an unscented one first so that means she is either stressed (Arg!  I can't find it, just grab any one because something is better than nothing!) or confused about the exercise.

Going back to what happened today, she did get leather right (placed in the front) but the batteries died for that, so it wasn't filmed.





I like how youtube doesn't crop and stretch videos from my tablet, but the downside is the tablet has no zoom.  I wonder if I can change the filming ratio in my camera so it isn't widescreen?