So we had an update with Judith and it was really helpful! I sent a couple of videos over. Starting with the grooming one…

This is so much better! We have made really good progress and I’m very happy with it. To keep this improving we talked about:
– ignoring him when he does lift a foot, waiting for him to firmly plant it for a few seconds and *then* click but be aware he might start to chain it and lift a foot in order to get the click. He doesn’t look like this has happened yet though
– starting clicking for any sort of being totally relaxed. We need to start encouraging him to be more relaxed now he’s less anxious about being groomed.

In hand work
We started to look at in hand work. I did a clip of where we’re starting from:

As you can see he gets anxious and frustrated as soon as we start trying to do anything! Judith noted that sometimes he looked confused, and was offering a leg because he didn’t really know what to do. He also looked happier moving rather than standing still. We have a few things to try:
– working with a target instead of the cavesson. I’ll probably keep the cavesoon on him so he can break any bad associations, but ask for forward down and lateral bend using a target, and then progress to walking with the target
– have breaks more frequently. Throw a target for him to touch, or do something he finds fun every few minutes as this is quite intense work and he finds it hard
– instead of asking for a few slow walk steps and then stopping before he tanks off try doing a few steps and then walking him on as letting him walk on a bit will be a bit of a break in itself.

We shall give these a go and see what happens.