Nakina continued building confidence this week, progressing toward her Intermediate Trick Dog title while handling new environments and changes in routine with ease.
🐾 What a Week
We are still waiting for AKC to officially award Nakina's AKC Fit Dog Silver title, but even without that announcement, this was a week full of progress.
Training
This week started with Part 1 of a two-part Scent Work seminar. While I attended the seminar, Nakina stayed home with Guy and was wonderful. Then, on Monday, I was called for Jury Duty, which meant another day at home with Guy. Once again, Nakina handled it beautifully. It's encouraging to see how comfortable and confident she is becoming when our routine changes.
On Tuesday, we had a great private training session with Nakina's trainer. We worked in a location with significantly more activity than usual, which made focusing a little more challenging. Even so, Nakina did very well and continued building confidence in a busier environment.
Our Rally Skills class also went extremely well. We designed our graduation project, which is a short Rally course of our own creation. Over the next week, we'll continue practicing it before submitting it and then performing it the following week.
Intermediate Tricks was a lot of fun. I continue to think Tricks may be Nakina's favorite activity. We only need two more tricks before we can submit for her AKC Intermediate Trick Dog title.
Socialization
Training remains our primary focus right now. The socialization items that are still on our list haven't been forgotten, but they have temporarily taken a back seat while we continue building training skills and confidence.
What's Next
- Emergency Stop & Hand Targeting — reintroduce and build consistency
- Down vs. settle — continue creating a clear distinction
- Stay — increase distance, duration, and distractions
- Recall — continue on leash in more distracting environments
- Travel Crate — zipping with no stress
- Grooming — begin grooming desensitization on the table
- Continue elevator desensitization
This was a very successful week. Nakina made significant progress toward her Intermediate Trick Dog title, continued improving her focus in more challenging environments, and showed increasing confidence and maturity when faced with changes to her normal routine.