Friday, September 17, 2010

Greatful for an excellent practice

Today I took Tip and Split over to the house for a practice. We worked on some short courses authored by Kathy Keats (on the Cleanrun site) and some jump grids.

First I worked Split prepared that we might have to scrape the course work and go back to circle drills (he was a little wild yesterday). Split was 100 percent in the game and ran the courses exactly like I asked! It was a great course because we had an opportunity for me to work on my timing with him. I am trying to better hone when I can cue and good and when I need to wait and be patient! In general I need to wait when I need collection--working on being better about that.

Tip did an AWESOME job on the same course. Very tight, not straight forward and she ran it clean. Man she still amazes me how far she has come. She watches me so close now!

We need worked on jump grids. I went back to the tunnel, three collected jumps and an extended jump. I felt that I had more to learn in terms of timing with the dogs. It was very fun to play with this. Split needs me to be slightly more patient with him on the collected jumps. Tip, she gets the cue and then I can go. In some ways Split is way more sensitive to my lack of motion that Tip.

I will throw in here a word about Tangle's practice last night. First we worked on recall. Boy do I need to shake this up. When he sees the treat bag he is ON IT and knows the game. It is probably time to up the distraction a little and see how he does. Maybe a park this weekend. Next we worked on sit, tug (from Susan Garrett's book). He got really good at this one as well. My goal is to get a really fast sit with him which he is well on his way to achieving! We are also playing the ready, set, OK game with tug. As soon as he hears "ready" his butt is down waiting for the next round to begin! Such a bright boy. Tangle has been getting daily walks with a little running in there (not much). He sees horses, goats, skid streer's, dogs, people, birds, etc.. We make it a little further every day.

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