So, what he does...before starting IPO training, when I said fuss, he would walk next to me in a decent position. Now, I have been kind of sold on the focused heel, so I changed it up..when I said "with me" he does his decent heel and can look around. Now I am trying to use fuss word for the focused heel only. He is getting it, slowly.
He makes a lot of eye contact with me naturally. When he feels he needs to. He is a suspicious dog too, I had taught him "watch me" to get his attention in case someone was being pushy about petting him
Basically I have jumbled his commands and I hope I am not confusing him too much. He is picking up on it though.
Is he toy driven? Well, kind of. He is handler driven. For instance if I present a tug or toy, he lights up and plays a great aggressive tug, and he will enthusiastically work OB for his reward of tug. WITH ME. When the trainer tries to show me something, and he takes the tug and lead..Valor is like...whatever, I don't want to play with YOU...and stares directly at me like why did you give him my lead and toy, and what is going to happen now.
The first time he got on a table to work with a helper the helper had a long tug on a rope. Valor was like why is he doing that, looking at me (the helper was tossing the tug and taking it back quickly to entice him). The helper taught me how to encourage him and when he clicked, boy did he click. He did well on the sleeve too, now that he gets it. But if another person merely takes a tug and tries to play with him, he really isn't interested (at least until he knows that person..he will play with other people in his life that he "knows" )
I don't know if you would interpret that as toy/tug drive? He is a thinker. You can SEE him deliberating things. As a result he sometimes hits commands slowly until he "knows them knows them" type thing.
AND he is NOT all the way past my armpit lol I saw the video and yes he is very tall, but they were exaggerating all in good fun (telling me to put a magnet on my hat). He is tall enough where my armpit just isn't high enough to be effective (his nose does touch my armpit when he looks up.)
We are going to try various placements with magnets tomorrow. Maybe my shoulder? We will see. What I will do is have my OB on video and I'll post here for critique. Maybe some bitework too. As for the bitework where helpers are in video, I'll have to get approval from the helpers to see if they are ok with me sharing the video. They do allow it, but with permission. Totally understandable.
Here is a pic of his beginning bitework 2 weeks ago: