kind of an odd day

Yesterday was an interesting day - Peepers had a little incident with the harness, and even though he was a bit surly, ended up asking for a 2nd session after Sparky was done with hers.

Peepers first session was going along ok, when he got hung up in the harness. he was pretty crabby about it, but we got the thing off, and went right back to working on putting his head through the loop. This is something I tend to do - if something goes horribly wrong, I make sure no one is hurt, and get right back to the behavior. I don't like to end on such a bad note, I think it gives everyone too much time to think about the scary thing that happened. I want to focus on positive aspects of training. I've never been unable to get the behavior again right away, but if I wasn't, I would make sure to do something positive before ending (excpet in case of serious injury of course). We also worked for a long time after that, I guess Peepers got over it pretty quickly. The video is split into 2 parts, here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQE4CIPJykU and here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEGEh1ZI2P0.

Sparky then had her session. I thought I would add in the harness and see how she reacted to doing other things around it. She once again had a longer than usual session, but was clearly a little unsettled about the harness (and prolly the table, and Peepers, and everything else that makes her nervous) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsQ6-F9uzlM

Once I had finished with Sparky, I began the cleanup, and Peepers flew to his spot on the table that he goes to while he waits for me to get ready to train. I took this as a sign that he wanted to have another session, so I worked with him again. It was odd, because he was a little surly, and I usually wouldn't work with him at all when he's like that, but I felt he had asked for the session, so I felt like I should give it to him. And, he didn't misbehave at all for it. He just had that funny air about him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMywy3xTmqU

I think that the wing lifting exercise is making Peepers uncomfortable, but he still wants to train, so I am seeing this slightly testy behavior. Plus, he did get stuck in the harness yesterday, so I would guess that would also affect his mood. I am really proud of his effort even during the more difficult parts of his training. And Sparky I think is starting to get more confident, which is really great to see.