Week #1 Reflection

 5.14.23 // 8:00 pm

Throughout this week Ray has improved dramatically. Even others like Heidi Thoma have noticed that Ray has grown so much. This week my patience had never been tested so far in my life. Ray is as stubborn as I am and a lot of the time was spent sitting and waiting for him to lay down, or crawl into his career to then reward that behavior. I figured out that he will pay attention to bacon and it has proven to be one of the only treats he will accept. I have learned so much this week. From the many exercises, Dee has suggested and from the internet. I have found that positive reinforcement is the best training method. To reward what is good, and if Ray does something bad, he will lose his freedom. This has really worked for him. Ray has also learned a lot. 

I am really happy that I chose this senior project and I am really enjoying my time with Mr. Ray. But I did not anticipate that we would be doing the same tricks, or steps of them, 30-50 times per day. I did not realize that he would need that much repetition. Although, sometimes he surprises me with how smart he is. He has taken to healing walking on my left side only with only slack in his leash in a matter of a week. And he quickly learned the difference between his two harness loops. This is astonishing as I remember training my other dogs to walk like this took a few months let alone four days. In the coming week, I will be continuing his tricks including this leash walking in more distracting environments to make sure he listens. 

I do not think that Ray will be able to get his Good Dog Citizenship by the end of senior project, as he is still very young and will definitely need more time. But I do think he will be much more prepared to take on college and the world by the time graduation rolls around.