Putting together some of the ideas from previous posts, today I began using the sit/here game for continued outdoor proofing of Lightning’s remote Sit and Here cues. Although we have practiced Lightning’s outdoor recall for weeks, today’s work was the first step of outdoor proofing for the sit/here game, the first outdoor step being the yard near the house. Some details:

• As in the indoor game, I would cue Sit wherever Lightning happened to be standing, then immediately cue Here. I carried an open jar of PB and gave him a taste from my finger as reinforcement.
• I left Laddie inside while I worked with Lightning outside. I’ve let Laddie participate in this game indoors, but we need to proof it so that it works without him as well.
• Sometimes Lightning would run to me to sit when I cued Sit from some distance. By walking him back to his point of origin, then walking away and cueing Sit again, running to me before sitting became less likely.
• Since I couldn’t reinforce the remote Sit from distance, for the game I immediately cued Here as soon as he sat down. Thus Here is functioning not only as a cue on its own, but also as a secondary reinforcer for a different cue, in this case Sit.
• I have to be careful not to inadvertently train Sit/Here as an invariable behavior chain, since eventually Sit will often be followed by some other behavior, such as watching marks being thrown, or taking casts during handling. So sometimes after a remote Sit, I walked over to Lightning to reinforce rather than calling him to me.
• Once again, I found that Lightning seems to especially enjoy a search element for recall, with me being out of sight when I finally call Here. That has the added training advantage of proofing Sit so that he can stay sitting even when I go out of sight.

Later today, we’ll do some retrieving. As we’ve done over the last few days, and will continue to do for months into the future, Lightning will often get some kind of non-retrieve training, and some retrieve training, in separate sessions on the same day. Filled with mental stimulation as well as physical activity, I guess it’s an exciting life for a dog.