wednesday night berlin had class - there's no class for her next week, so we will spend some time just working. maybe. im such a lazy trainer, my dogs would be so much better if i worked them more.
anyway, we started with some heeling - worked in a group. then, kathy had us taken them off leash!!! we still worked in a group, but we heeled for about 20 minutes - it was more heeling than berlin has ever done. she was doing well, and she was one of the few that didn't get put back on leash for leaving me - but we were both tired by 20 minutes in, and she was even panting !!!!!!!! poor gal. kathy had us stop periodically and work on 20 seconds of keeping our dogs with us while we were just "hanging" and then setting them back up into heel position.
berlins push definitely suffered by the end - i dont know if it was just feeding off of me (i was definitely a lot flatter by the end), or if it was that she wasnt used to that much heeling, if its just her method of heeling (i have to stop comparing her to rah - i have to remember, as others point out - part of rahs drive is that he teeters so close to the point of lack of control that we really are dangerous), or what... but its very different than rah. the more tired rah gets, the MORE he pushes. the more tired berlin gets, the less she is there. its odd. shes a normal dog? im not used to normal dogs. rah just digs deeper. maybe it will come with berlin.
im going to bring berlins toy out for her heeling to try to get more flash with her heeling. im a hypocrite because i want precision more than anything, but i also think she has the ability to give me flash AND precision, so i want to see if i can get it. i get flash from her about 70% of the time right now. i also have to work on her position and have terry watch her (maybe the next private, ill have it split) - because when the food goes away from my hand to my mouth, she goes wider to see it. also mental note- when she was tired, she stopped sitting.
we immediately went from the heeling to an off leash SFE - and berlin was awesome. she totally gets stand now without any extra cues, but she pops out almost perpendicular to me. i have to start working her on a barrier to stop it, but she has a really cute pop, she FINALLY gets the stand after literally a year of working it! she was also one of the few dogs that did a perfect SFE, not moving an inch. then after that, we returned to our dogs and heeled them over to a set up for the heel off leash, like we would in the ring.
we got to take a break for a few minutes (phew) while the class was split in half to work on fronts. berlins fronts werent half bad - she's fast, but she has a tendency to come in, when i go past 10-15 feet, slightly arked (a little to my left all the time) before she hits a straight front. odd, right? im going to break out the clicker and work on defining her perfectly straight front - shes coming in very straight, right up and touching me, so its nice. have to work on defining her pop up left finish as well.
also - mental note - if im going to show her in rally in 2 weeks (she is entered at tappan zee, im a goner!) i need to teach her a right finish!).
then we did stays, and she was perfect.
all in all, not bad for a baby girl. i think im going to do some rally with her, definitely some APDT, and then enter her in CDSP and UKC obedience and see how she does early next year. I'd like to get rah out of novice in both of these orgs so that i dont have to show them in the same classes, though. hmmm...
there are some internetz people who are driving me crazy lately. im just going to have to learn to keep my mouth shut...
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