This week, Coal began shaping the “Interrupt” behavior to address early signs of recipient frustration, such as yelling or throwing items. Through consistent cue pairing and reinforcement, Coal is starting to recognize and respond to distress cues by nudging or approaching the handler. The “Free” marker helped establish a clear end point to the interrupt behavior, which supported smoother transitions back to calm obedience.
Coal demonstrated steady improvement in recognizing both verbal and nonverbal escalation cues. He showed increasing reliability in interrupting at the right moment, and even began to move toward the recipient preemptively during setup scenarios.
Obedience and public access behaviors like Heel, Sit, and Stay were practiced to maintain responsiveness, and Coal’s focus remained strong even with distractions. Minor challenges included some confusion between the Interrupt and general approach behavior, which was addressed by reinforcing only the specific interruption behaviors (nudge/paw) and refining timing on cue delivery.
