That Kind of Dog

I've been hearing that phrase a lot lately, in reference to Moto. "I've had That Kind of Dog", or "when you have That Kind of Dog".....unfortunately it's not a great Kind of Dog. We've had some pretty poor training sessions lately, sub-par performances in class and in fun matches, and Moto's been very unfocused and skittish. It's not been fun. Sad to say, the jury is out on whether or not he can attain an OTCH. I always knew from the beginning that Shiloh would get an OTCH. Even at our very lowest moments I knew he would do it.
But Moto is an entirely different case.
I have five dogs, but Moto is the only one who is healthy enough to train and show. Oh, how I wish he had drive! But Moto is Moto and drive is not one of his characteristics. He has lots of other great attributes though but they aren't attributes that will shine in the ring.
The weather is warm today (35 is warm in a Midwest winter) so I decided to take him out to a quiet shopping center to work on attention. There's the occasional car and shopper but not a lot. It was perfect training conditions for what I needed. It didn't go well at all at first. A shopkeeper came out to admire Moto (being gorgeous is one of those gppd attributes) but he was too nervous to accept food from her. Later on he relaxed a bit so when another admirer approached he accepted the petting. We really couldn't heel, so we just worked on focused attention and a few steps with focused attention. This was broken up between a bunch of other stuff - doodling, signals, fronts & finishes to help relieve his tension. That and some fun play. Finally, finally, I saw his jaw part and a smile come to his face. Another attribute is he makes his feelings very clear: he just needed to know what I expected from him. Once he "got it" he turned in some nice attention. No, nothing complex but he could doodle and "get close" and straight lines very nice. I let him know I was very pleased with him and he basked in that. That is his best characteristic - he cares what I think, and since I was pleased he was pleased too. We ended on that happy note. The weather is supposed to turn very cold again but I intend to capitalize on every good weather day I have. We won't be making any progress unless he can get out more.
We'll end the day with what I cherish most about Moto - his very best attribute - and that is cuddling and snuggling. Next to Dusty he is the BEST cuddler and his large size makes a wonderful pillow!