ill try, since one of my readers wants more berlin/attention in this blog, to remember what we did in her class. we always start with a little "pet dog" to get the dog used to LLW and focusing only on us and not other dogs, and then turn that into moving watch with the dog in front of me. then we did some heeling - in fact, a lot of heeling. we introduced halts the week prior, and did a lot of that -
halts all over the room, about 15 paces and then either about turns, right turns, or halts. she's getting very nice - offering me about 90-95% heads up attention heeling all the time, which is good for her! i sometimes lose her if someone gets too close to us while we heel because she sniffs them, and i lose her on fasts, so we need to work that - but other than that, her head and body position is superb, which thrills me. she's a very nice, happy worker. we're working on getting her to tuck when she sits - she's very funny. she gets impatient in heel position if we don't start soon enough and she starts moving, and when she's wearing her panties (since she's in heat), she flips onto her tail and sits on it with her feet falling forward, since it must hurt her to sit on her vulva, it's so swollen (sorry, TMI!).
we worked on short fronts, sit for exam, and SFE, some stays, and started working on the beginnings of a left finish.
sat out from open and then moved to heeling with rah - kathy heeled us for 30 minutes straight. STrAIGHT. have you ever heeled for 30 minutes straight? its kILLER. KILLEr. like, i couldnt feel my feet or my legs by the end. oh my god, i was dying. rah was pretty good - by the end even HE was tired. lots of heeling, pace changes, halts, turns, etc. but he was under a lot more control and i dictated to him that he HAD to give me a consistent head position and demanded it, i think kathy liked that.
thursday... i did novice and utility with rah.
heeled in novice much the same as wednesday (i think terry is just copying kathy's patterns so i have an unfortunate preview!) - he was a little less enthusiastic, but under control for the most part. did recalls, and he was nice! SFE was perfect, fig8 i needed to give him one correction on the first turn but then he was much better - i need to keep reminding myself that i need to stand up and take control! he held his stays and i sat out open.
utility was a comedy of errors - started with articles and he blanked on what he was supposed to do (After his marvelous job on the pile the week prior??) and he got corrected on the pile twice for just poke and grabbing - i realized he really had no idea of what he was doing wrong, so i backed him up a step, gave him an article with cheese on it in the pile, and he successfully did 4 after that.
gloves weren't bad - terry has him doing the actual gloves (with no pivots) and he did better, but i need to work on keeping a tight turn at glove 2.
signals were awesome as was moving stand (yay rah) but wow, go outs and DJ - rah had the silliest go outs i've ever seen - one was a bunch of circles before he made it out to the stanchion (WHAT??)....
yeah. ups and downs. his heeling and halts are significantly improved, though - at least IMO.
he hasn't limped on the left front leg since i got home. i tossed him two tramadol.
worked through a CDSP open run today at training, and did articles (he did them flawlessly), and he again had problems with go outs, something he never had problems with before. ill work those once we are done with the trial next week. intro'd berlin to the broad jump and the high jump.
then spent an hour BS'ing with elsie (terry's and kathy's mother, also a trainer) about people, trainers, dogs and the like.
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