This week I started working with Coco by familiarizing her with a few basic commands. She already came to me decently well when I called her, but she definitely needed some practice. I also wanted to get her used to the sit, lie down, and roll over commands. 

At first I had some trouble starting out because she is a ball full of energy and wouldn't sit still long enough for me to even say the command. So, as a result I had to change my tactics. I started snapping to get her attention, which proved to work extremely well. So by the time Saturday had rolled around, she has started coming to me when called (She only comes when I whistle) and standing still long enough to let me get the command out. 

At the begging of this week I solidified her ability to come to me and started working on sitting. To make her sit, I would say "sit" while snapping my fingers twice. She needed some encouragement at first by me pushing her butt down while saying sit, but she ended up catching on pretty quickly. Next, I wanted to teach her to lie down. First I would have her sit and just be there for a little while, then by snapping my fingers three times very close to the ground in front of her nose, I would tell her to lie down. She didn't really respond at first, but we kept trying. 

On Tuesday I kept doing about the same thing over and over again, and she finally laid down! Now she has started following the sound of my snaps and doing what I teach her to do. We kept practicing lying down until she had it almost perfect, then came the time for her to roll over. This one was pretty easy though because I could say "roll over" and gently push her head until she rolled over on her back and I could scratch her belly. She definitely caught on to that one quickly because now she gets a scratch when she rolls over. But now we have another slight issue... she rolls over before I tell her to. But we have figured out a solution to that as well. I just have her sit and lie down, but I will hold my hand on her back until I say roll over. She actually picked up on this extremely well. 

So last night I decided to just go for a little walk with her and randomly have her do all the new commands. She actually responded very well which made me feel like we are ready to take on next week with some new things and hopefully so cow dog commands.