Ween Sze & Moonbeam (MB), Working Cocker Spaniel, 3yo+, Singapore

Welcome! Looking forward to working with Moonbeam again and seeing what kind of crazy girl she turned into! 🙂

Definitely no problem at all. 🙂 So we can try and add another variation to it. You will hold your hands with the treat up like for example at 0.33 and you do that until she offers some kind of stillness. It can be in a stand or sit position, but she has to be perfectly still, no wiggling. She is actually already offering it at times, so it shouldn’t be too hard to reinforce. While waiting for that stillness keep your hands perfectly still. Make sure you give a very clear marker word like “yes” or “ok” with a happy and lively voice and quickly put your hand on the ground for her to poke. Gradually you will start moving the hand(s) with food slowly after she has “frozen”. At first you can just move it towards her face VERY VERY slowly and your goal is that she keeps looking at it without changing position until she hears “ok” and you rapidly move the hand down on the ground.
When she is ok with slight and easy movement, you will start moving the hand to the ground very slowly and only give her an “ok” once the hand is on the ground already.

Cool! She did some awesome sits with perfect stillness! After a while she fell into a shaping mode and was figuring out which behavior to offer so she lost that intensity. To avoid that you can mix it with food throws just up and down across the room. And than randomly hands up, anticipation and “bam”. This “freeze” has to come purely out of drive – it is anticipation freeze so if she falls into a slightly nervous “thinking mode” or trying to offer behaviors she might end up standing or sitting still, but with different emotional background.

You can do normal food throws across the room, it doesn’t have to be “air throws”. It is just to keep her moving and have that contrast between movement and compression. But you can do air throws too sometimes, because it is a nice skill to have.
Building anticipation and slow movement is generally correct yes and she was mostly in appropriate drives. When you start moving your hand, don’t move it towards her face because she thinks she will get it and it distracts her. Move it away from her – to the side and down. Be VERY careful with releases, I believe she pushed you into a release at least twice – meaning she twitched before you gave her the command. If she twitches just wait a bit longer and if she moves and leaves position, lure her into a spin or something before setting up for anticipation freeze again. If you just wait for her to correct her mistake she goes into a different – impulse control mode and she offers a correct behaviour, but asking you for permission with eye contact and that is a different game.
Hope that makes sense 🙂

Yes! That is it! Great job. 🙂 Now we will add even more variation to the mix. Think of some very energetic tricks she does – spinning or even barking on cue… Mix them in the session. Start same way as usual, then randomly ask for some quick spins or a bark or some other trick you can think of. Sometimes reward that trick with a throw and sometimes ask for stillness without rewarding the active trick. You can help her achieve stillness by holding the hand up or if she is struggling even telling her to sit or down and than showing her the hand, so she can remember and switch. Being able to switch her from high action to “compressed” action is what we are going for. 🙂

Food pocket toy – she plays well with normal toys right? Is she having any troubles switching from food to toy and back? I am asking those things just to know if/where we need to take this food pocket game. If she doesn’t have any issues with playing or switching, this game is not really necessary for her. If you still wanted to develop it, I would try to move the toy faster to make it more like regular toy so she will not be occupied with food so much but rather go for a proper bite. Was she the one that didn’t really want to bite into this toy as a pup? If she hesitates to bite even when the toy is presented as a regular toy, than I would slow it down to the point where you are just moving it very slowly in a straight line but you are very precise with when you reward her – you have to feel her effort on the toy, no matter if it is a paw (you have to feel her attempt to stop it) or she picks it in her mouth. Don’t stop if she just opens her mouth around the toy.

Go sniff is what it should be. 🙂

Nice! You can pair this anticipation behaviour with a verbal cue, so it will be easier for her to know when to switch. It can just be something like “reeeeady…?” at this point because we are not pairing it with any specific position yet. For now use it when you see she is just about to switch into that mode or as soon as she does.
Separately you can also add another twist – when she is in anticipation and you put your hand down, use her food bowl and leave the treat there. Move your hand away before releasing her to the bowl. When she understands this concept, you can have her in anticipation, leave the treat in a bowl but before releasing her, ask her to do another simple thing such as quick nose touch before releasing her to the bowl. She might be confused at first or won’t be able to listen, but just stay patient. If you can, block her from stealing the treat, but even if she does… just try it again until she is successful and make a big party – she doesn’t just get the treat in the bowl but a couple of food throws extra while you cheer her on. 🙂