Tess' Running Dogwalk Turns Progress

Here lately I haven't been able to train but on Sundays mostly, yet we have been having sooo much progress training Tess' verbal turns off the DW!! I am so EXCITED considering in the past I have been able to teach her to turn off the DW on a verbal, but I've never been able to get her to do so with much speed at all. She's always been so focused on the turn or even just thinking about her striding that getting her to RUN (rather than trot) over her DW and into the turn has always been our challenge. And with Tess I learned a long time back that if we're trying a method that causes Tess to have to think, that method probably won't give us the results we're hoping for... Anyway, these past few sessions we discovered a method (foot target/Hit-It board idea) to train these turns that Tess THRIVES with!! I don't know why but this dog just *gets* foot targets...The criteria is clear, she doesn't have to think and she can focus on driving so therefore Tess feels confident enough in her task to complete her turns off the dogwalk with SPEED!! Not only that but with this method I've been able to actually give her the different dogwalk cues, "go"(straight) vs "get"(turn) from the BEGINNING of the dogwalk! Previously we had a lot of difficulty with the timing of the cues if it were anything but a straight as if I cued her early she would lose all of her speed, yet if I cued her later she would panic due to too little time to prepare and plan for the task she was being asked to perform.

EXCITEMENT OVERLOAD... she's been keeping up these great results for several sessions now so it's not just a fluke "good day" :D

Anyway, video of Tess not only turning on a verbal, but also showing the ease she has in distinguishing between the "go"s & the "get"s :) Super speed, super accuracy, super ENTHUSIASM!! :)  

Also, just a short video of how her turns training looked before as we were experimenting with different methods. Here the manners minder method of slowly moving the target to the side and simply not rewarding the dog if it cuts corners and leaves the dogwalk early vs rewarding for running through the contact. Accuracy was pretty good, speed was lacking, enthusiasm was alright. Much like many of our other past attempts at training turns :p