Independence day weekend

December 6th was Finnish Independence Day so we had a long weekend. On Saturday I went to visit a friend of mine and we also did some alert training. Riva's bark alert is coming along nicely but we have not tried victims that lay down on the ground, only standing ones. His alert behavior needs to be very solid before I dare to have victims lying down so that he doesn't harass them (even though it is out of friendliness). In wilderness search the victims can be out in the open so the dog must know how to behave nicely when alerting so it doesn't frighten or hurt people.

On Sunday we did some obedience stuff with my friends and I was very satisfied with Riva. We have not done a lot of training under distractions, it has been mostly at home or private sessions. Still, he did very nicely, we did figure eights around people and small stay excercises with my friends standing around and talking as distraction. Riva would focus nicely while working and waited untill I released him and then visited with people.

And he is still doing well with being loose in the bedroom. He spent three days free last week and I left him free this morning again. I still put him into the pen occasionally for nights etc.