Class tonight for the first time in about 2 weeks, since we missed last weeks class due to the shows at Edison, and Wednesdays classes were on hiatus these past two weeks...
decided since we've been off for awhile to do a drop in for the Rally class. Apparently a big mistake - rah HAD been doing well up until his third run through, at which point he rah into the jump. he was heeling, i sent him, and he ran his entire body into the jump standard... and while he escaped without injury, the jump hit him in the butt. Which cemented his fear that there are ass monsters out there trying to attack him, and for the rest of the evening, rah was PETRIFIED of the jump being behind him, JUST INCASE it was going to fall and attack him.
I know, he's such a big, brave doberman.
I spent the last 10 minutes of class just sending him over the jump a few times, which he did for cookie marks. We just hung out and watched novice, and then onto open...
Heeled around. First time Rah has heeled in about 2 weeks, he didn't do so badly. Felt out of shape like WHOA, his sits were pretty good if I do say so myself, his attention was spot on, he had two sits where my signals were off so in one he just didn't sit at all, and in the other he sat too far back, but he was pretty straight all in all.
DId the continuous figure 8 exercise next and Rah's actually starting to show some improvement there, I think - It's so hard to get him to back off of me, especially when half of the fig8 exercise involves the outer post - and that to Rah is a race, his fave game :) But he's bumping me I'd say about 70% less than he did in the past and he's got his head up and he's definitely doing better.
Next were restrained recalls, and I am so pleased with the progress his fronts are making - even when I do not line up straight for him :) He's really nailing his fronts, coming in and setting up straight and he KNOWS it, which is so cute and adorable :) I didn't do any DOR's today, just regular fronts.
Next we brought out high jumps, broad jumps, and the db. Rah did some nice broad jumps, but I didn't work the HJ much since he was so afraid of the jumps today. I took it easy with retrieves since he had utility to do later on...
We ended that class with attention work in the face of Terry the trainer tossing the db down the center of the room while we worked the dogs on the side - Rah did well. Then she came up to us and handed us the db again and we had to keep the dogs looking at us.
Rah took a quick break and then onto utility. There were three of us tonight - the aussie is back (took classes back when it was open/utility) and me and Teri are both in it - clearly the Aussie is much more advanced than us!!! so two blue dobes and an aussie. The aussie and I started with scent articles - she's working tie-downs, and apparently she had a rough week with articles because she had to work 40 scent articles!!!!!!! Rah worked the entire pile happily, which I was pleased with, and he's on day 4 of week 2 of ATC ... I'm not decided yet if I will move on to week three or do 2 weeks of week 2... I think I might move on to week 3, he's getting it. My trainer did say that for the very brief sniffs of the metal articles, that I should just ignore them right now - she said he worked the pile nicely and seemed to have a good purpose about the entire thing, and he's doing it happily so I'm good with that if she is!
Then we moved to go outs - we started it this week with Terry putting the cheese on the gait, and the first time I gave Rah the look, he was so confused because I've always put the cheese there, he didn't understand that there could be cheese without me putting it there!!!!! Silly dog... then once he realized cheese can come from heaven (or Terry), he was OBSESSED with the cheese, so I had to get out the clicker and click him for attention, and actually had to get out the LEAVE IT command so he would stop staring at the cookie until i TOLD him to...
finally had nice attention, so i could finally reward him with a look at the cookie, and finally a go-out :) and he's doing nice sits, but I quickly realized that I wasn't using his NAME before I told him to sit, so I have to remember to do that (it's a quick and easy legal double command!) And we worked those for about 10-15 minutes, and it culminated with Rah doing a 15 foot go-out on the flexi, which was pretty nice!!!!
We did some directed jumping, but it was only 2 jumps on each, because Rah was unsure with the jumping so it was more to remind him that he can do it. Then we put the dogs away (by now he'd done three classes, remember!) and did some footwork for pivots for the gloves and called it a night.
On non-training news, Berlin broke Rah's Noz2Noz crate tonight while I was doing scent articles, and now I need to get new soft crates.
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