Saturday, July 19, 2008

a day late...

POOR RAH is one gigantic pustule... he's on cipro right now, hopefully he will respond to this. We're running out of antibiotics on earth at this point!

Wednesday night - sad Rah, flyball is over so it was just Berlin for attention. we did some heeling in groups of three and then added in left and right turns. we worked on stand, did some fronts, and did some recalls. need to work on lots of things, but she was overall good, my silly silly girl.

thursday - started with heeling in groups of 2's and i really worked hard to get rah's sits straight, and by the end rah was fixing his sits himself to get himself straighter, which was nice. if only i could keep his attention better, he's been spacey lately. what the heck?

did some recall games also in groups of 2, where i would intersperse calling him with rewarding the wait and he did nicely - he comes so straight, but at the last minute he sits crooked. i need to work on fixing that last iota of the crooked front. my dog is too long!!

ROF was nice - he was funny and added in the high jump on the way out and back once, but i cant correct that since he has "issues" with the jump so i just laughed.

the jump itself was good - he did it at 24", and terry thinks i should just leave him low until right before i show him, maybe he wont see competition height until he's in the ring. broad jump was nice, but the one time he decided to jump it diagonally and he had such momentum going that he almost ran into anne paul's dune and it was hilarious. dune of course was absolutely perfect and didnt even flinch. rah wants to eat her meatballs, by the way. me? i would settle for a river puppy... sigh...

worked some more db games and did more heeling, and then it was time for utility.

started with articles, and rah is silly with them. he consistently is getting the first article wrong - he will go out to the pile, halfheartedly work the pile, and then snatch an article (invariably wrong - this evening it was the article right NEXT to the right article), and then stare at me knowing its wrong. i corrected him verbally, and sent him again to the right article. and then he's like, oh, we're doing scent articles? ok - and i can do 4 other sends and he will execute them FLAWLESSLY - so go figure? i dont understand! terry said that it could be a few things -
1) i could be overscenting the first article - since i am trying to set a routine up, and i always do metal first, i scent that one heavily. i have to watch and see - does he always pick one NEAR the correct article? if so, i could be overscenting and he is picking one that also smells like me. but he should pick the HOTTEST scent, as thats how hes trained, and that isnt the hottest scent out there - but then again, in his defense for that, he never got to the hottest scent, he picked up this one before the hot scent article was even in his "vision".
2) he lacks confidence to work the pile without clear vision as to what we are doing - so my first send should involve him going out to the pile with a small dab o' cheese so he's confident, or do the first send on a smaller pile.
3) maybe try him on leather first?

im going to play around with it today and see how he does. he has a private today, maybe we will work some articles. i dont know, i want to focus on heeling today. when he's wrong, ill leave the incorrect article out there and he never reindicates it, so its very bizarre...

then moved to moving stand, and he was super spectacular - stood first time on command, held it for terry's full exam, but i dont call him to heel, just broke him out with the cookies. then signals and mommy was very silly and forgot that the judge had to tell me to leave my dog :) but he did awesome signals. then go outs and directed jumping which were also very nice, but i forgot to work on him working OFF the cookie last week - oops! then gloves - we did pivots first without any gloves and rah did nice pivots, but when we tried to incorporate them into gloves rah gets a little confused, so i am not going to combine the two of them yet. he knows to mark, but we had problems last night with him marking every piece of cheese and wanting ALL the cheeses.

worked him outside today and just did go outs and directed jumping and it was so hot. tried to get videos and failed because it was so hot and the video wasn't centered...

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