Wednesday, May 13, 2015

She has a heart of gold

I love this little dog.  She has a heart of gold and the work ethic that won't quit.  She always tries to please.

This was our practice today.  Our training agenda was based on things that we have worked on lately, but that weren't going as well as I like.  Also to work areas where I felt like my trust wasn't as strong as it needed to be.  This video has Hoot's whole practice on it, I didn't just edited it to show the good parts.   I need to post things like this for myself.  I want to be able to look back to see what we were doing when, and also to always remember that we have skill in spite of the days that seem bad.

The dog walk is in a position on the field so that one way she is running downhill (right to left) and the other running up hill (left to right).  Her hits were good but not as solid as I had been getting when it was level.  So I decided to see if we could get that improved.   Downhill was to a tunnel and uphill was to a jump upright.  The up hill is not as deep, but in all, I am very happy with this session.

Next is a sequence that we did yesterday.  There were a few knocked bars, and lots of really wide turns.  I had been getting a bit lax in rewarding and working really nice turns so that was my goal.  We handled with front crosses and blind crosses.  I felt like this practice helped me move along the continuum of trust as well.

The last item we worked on was weaves.  As I remember all the different ways I need to proof weaves we work on those.  I try never to do too many weaves in a single session.




Hoot was my little rock star today.  I love it when you put time between your bad practice and next practice and everything seems to sort itself out!