Hmmmmmm......

Moto has me scratching my head. Obviously I still haven't figured him out. He's a completely different temperament than his sire Shiloh, but like Shiloh he has an extremely complex personality. Shiloh and I made a great team as we were more alike work-wise, where this guy is a creature unto himself. Before we ever enter the Novice ring I need to get a handle on what makes him tick to get the best performance out of him.
I've been taking him everywhere and exposing him to lots of different places/people/things/sounds. Our latest "big" outing was to the local Orsheln's Farm & Home store. The store clerks were wonderful and warmly greeted Moto and were anxious to pet him. He was extremely shy and didn't want to be touched and refused offerings of dog biscuits from them. We walked around the store and he quickly recovered and began to be inquisitive about his surroundings. He showed his usual sweet self when we looked at the baby chicks, looking at them calmly and quietly. Honestly if they were loose I imagine he'd either lay down and let them crawl on him or he'd gently nudge them to a safe place. He's that kind of a dog.
When we got to the doggie toy section I let him pick out a toy (a huge rubber Kong) and then his lips parted and he became his smiley self. With our new prize in hand I wanted to see how he'd do in the outside portion of the store. It was a perfect training ground with stacks of fertilizer on large pallets. The wind was making the plastic rustle slightly for a mild sound distraction. Moto again became nervous and was looking around. I tried some heelwork without asking anything of him at all and had a dog who looked like he hadn't been trained at all. But then something interesting happened. Instead of luring with the yummy chicken in front of his face, I tried another tack: gave a positive collar pop and asked him to do a favorite trick - "get close" and when he did he was rewarded with food spit from my mouth for attention. He quickly snapped into work mode and I had some beautiful heelwork. It was only 4 or 5 steps but I didn't want to push my luck. Good boy!
This Saturday I trained with some classmates and our instructor at the Open class. Our run-through wasn't anything to write home about but with a few collar pops he worked and tried and displayed a good attitude. I ran him through off-leash and it was too early to do that. I think we'll go to a light line as I don't want him to think he CAN go wide, lag, etc. What fascinated me was he seems to understand "work mode" and can switch to that now. If the distractions aren't too overwhelming that is.
I'm hoping I have some sort of a foundation now that we can build on. We're only two weeks away from his Rally Novice debut. I know it won't be the performance I was hoping for. However, I believe he needs the ring experience, and lots of it, in order to get what I hope he can deliver. So we will move forward and show him and the goal will be for him to have a good experience and be able to do all of the signs. Once that's under his belt, I'll assess the situation and see what our next step will be.