#open to constructive criticism and advice from ppl who know what they're doing!

[rival-the-rose]

Today Laika and I took the biggest baby step towards scooter joring: actually running with a scooter! It went so well, I honestly wish I'd had someone to video it bc I'm so proud of her 💖 I really think this will be useful in her conditioning and we both had a lot of fun! The rest of this post is a training journal type thing and it's not terribly interesting, please feel free to hit "j" to skip.

THINGS THAT WENT GOOD:

-as expected, Laika is not afraid of the scooter or the noises it makes. She started a little bit when we went over a curb and everything jostled but settled back down immediately

-her "detangling" commands worked well but she still needs a fair amount of hand luring if the leash isn't providing pressure in the correct direction. She continues to not understand chirality but tbh me neither bud

-her gait transition cues worked!!! I did not anticipate that at all, I worked on those very briefly months ago but she picked up canter* within one or two steps of the command! This is going to be really useful as an indicator of her energy as when she got tired she would no longer canter even with a lot of encouragement.

- her "wait" command is... Good enough. She mostly still bases it on if I seem like I'm slowing/stopping rather than the command, but she's very tuned in to what I'm doing so it works well.

- directions are a mixed bag. "Gee" is right on the money, "haw" is a little laggy and more based on my telegraphing. "Over" (side/half pass to the left) is 100%, "closer" (side/half pass to the right) might as well not exist apparently lol. We have a specific part of our daily walks where we use "over" a lot, so I think intentionally adding a time where we use "closer" would fix that. I'm not sure what's going on with "haw" except that my partner apparently only turns to the left when walking her bc she likes saying "gee".**

- zero issues with squirrel chasing/being distracted by other dogs. Very much had her working brain on!

- cheese worked great as a reward during high activity. I usually use kibble for training but she tends to swallow those whole and then cough them back up if she's too active, cheese apparently can be swallowed whole with no issue.

THINGS TO WORK ON:

- I also need a lot of conditioning and to remember my inhaler lol. I think I went right to the limit of my endurance but only really took the edge off her energy lmao. I also need to work on my form/biomechanics but that mostly only affects me so I'm not too worried about it

-i also need to wear gloves bc the vibrating sensation thru the handle bars is Bad

- at this point she's primarily choosing a loose leash heel to the left, occasionally out in front when cantering. I'm fine with this bc I want to build up her muscle+get a proper harness before I ask her to pull anything, but I did expect that she would be out in front more since that's her preferred position while walking. However, she's only ever pulled from a heel before and she's never had cheese reward for being out in front. So I'll need to work on positioning as well as letting her know it's ok to pull in the new harness

-related to the above, the six foot lead is a little long for a heel position but about right for out in front. I definitely don't want one of the eight foot bungee leads but I think a six foot one would be ok.

- "wait", "closer" and "haw" as noted above

Overall, very very fun!! A great option for when I can't take her to the dog park to run and hopefully will help her get back to a higher level of fitness!

*I use a terrible mix of horse, livestock, and dog terms sorry. I'm sure there are ppl talking about training specific gaits in dogs but I'm doing it horse-wise.

** I use gee and haw backward for synesthesia reasons. Gee is closer in color to left and vice versa for haw, so that's how I use em bc Laika doesn't know the difference and I literally could not remember them the "right" way around. Will this bite me in the ass at some point? Possibly but I hope it's funny when it does