Down, down, down

Avery loves combining the tug game with training (schutzhund curly!), so earlier, I decided to try my luck and ask her to down while tugging.  Looking back, that was probably dumb seeing as she only had 1.5 short sessions of successful down-ing on command, but guess who has a genius puppy?  This girl.  She let go of the tug and stared at me for a few seconds, and then promptly went into a down.  :)  That merited a reward party and I probably looked ridiculous, haha.  Equally impressive was trying it with the "stand" command, which she also did on the first try.  Good girl!  The stand isn't necessarily as hard as she didn't have to change positions to go into the stand, but seeing as we normally do it with "sit," I was impressed that she stayed standing and didn't automatically sit.

Then, tonight, I did another short clicker training session with treats, and she was fabulous.  We worked on a variety of things that she knows the basics of, including left and right finishes, turns in heel position, attention, come front from various positions, stays, and recalls.  Honestly, I could not be happier with this puppy.  We had a few attention span blips where she thought other things were more interesting momentarily than doing a right finish, but I responded to that by ignoring her and training Dolly the Toy Manchester Terrier some.  Not sure if that's correct or not, but it seemed to bring her attention back ("hey, why is she getting treats?").

One issue I notice as of right now is in her left finishes, it usually takes her 3-4 times to find the correct position.  I don't reward her for incorrect positioning (she likes to sit at a right angle to me) but I wonder if this is something I should go back to luring with and make her do it correct all the time, or just keep only rewarding her when she does it correctly on her own?