happy thanksgiving

no class tonight (obviously) because its thanksgiving...
happy turkey day!

on a side note, am i the only one that cant get DT to load? im having DT withdrawal!

trained last night with rah. i actually went an hour early because i was bored and my house was cold, so i played with berlin for a bit. we're having db issues again, and so i worked on moving stand (we failed) and go outs, then fronts and drop on recall. she rocks at drop on recall, my dogs just get this. who knows why.

did stays with rah - i forgot his collar, but he held them without it and he was so good, what gooooooood boy. such high level of distraction, kathy was telling them to down and he was like uh uh not going to do it!

did some heeling. rah was weird and didnt want to heel near the wall? every time we went on that side of the room he kept pressing his entire body up against me. and i accidentally poked him in the eye with my watch when we went into a fast my poor baby. heeling was all over the place :)

worked some DOR - the get it get it game gets him overworked he loves it so much! but his DOR is nice and quick.

his broad jump was nice - hes coming in for straighter fronts but its hard - hes fronting a bit to my right leg. i think its just hard for him to get around. i need to keep his guides up so he doesnt cut the corner. maybe having a bigger broad jump - i dont think it was his full length last night.

ROF was nice, but we're having some bad issues with his fronts - also transitioned to ROH. hes stressed so he starts mouthing and doesnt want to come into front, he is slow, he inches, he comes in crooked.

its potentially a few things and likely a combo of BOTH of them

1) the db is so rewarding to him (i dont reward him necessarily for retrieves because he loves them so much - the retrieve itself is so fun for him, he loves it and the db IS his reward) that he doesnt want to give it up

2) he's SO in drive that he cannot even think about what is asked of him - hes focused so much on what is in his mouth, he really cant think about what else i am asking of him. plain and simple, ive overloaded him.


there were a few other things we considered, but i think these are the two most likely - especially considering how long we had to work to get him to bring me the db back, period. his real want is to just take it and run. he loves his db so much its all he desires. if there was a class that was all db work, he'd win it every time. last night in fact, he tried to make up a new exercise - DOROF - drop on retrieve on flat. i was dropping him for the recall, but he retrieved someones db while he did it.

so its back on flexi for us. GRRRRR. gotta work this to get him ready for open. who would have thought his best exercise would be his worst. clean up his fronts and i think we're ready for open.