Progress!

Trooper has been with us for five weeks now, and we're starting to see pay dirt in the training process.

He is very close to the grail in one of his sound tasks: to jump up on me and lead me to Debby when she calls my name from elsewhere in the condo.

The last couple of days, he has been executing this task without our needing to place a treat at her feet to entice him to the site—and without my needing to encourage him to jump up on me with a "Hup!" command to get my attention. Debby stands in the kitchen, I sit in my office, and when she calls "Henry!" he runs to her, then to me, and jumps up on me. I say "What? What?" and he runs back to Debby to show me where the sound was coming from—and collects a treat.

Now that we've got this down pat, more or less, we need to work the sound with Debby in different rooms. Yesterday she called from the bedroom, and Trooper ran to the kitchen as he thought he was supposed to. She wasn't there, and so he looked into every room before he found her in the bedroom. That confused him and he forgot to go to me.

But we're getting there.