December 27th 2008 9:26 pm
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Mistress had me practice the jump this evening. At first, I was thinking that I had better things to do than jump over some plastic stick. I gave mistress a ruff time, ignoring what she said, and even running past the jump instead of jumping it. But then she said "no!" while I was running around. I stopped, shocked. She usually likes it when I run around, especially when she has a camera like she did then.
Then she told her to go over the jump again and I did. And then she made a big deal out of it. Giving him back scratches/rubs. The whole nine yards of attention. I like attention better than almost anything. She has found that attention is a better motivater with me than toys or a treat.
Anyway, I got great at jumping after that. I even jumped higher and less sloppily.
Mistress already knew that motivating a dog is rewarding it with a reward that the dog thinks is good enough to work for, but the truthfullness of that concept was really driven home today.