revisiting sunday

so, i told you there would be an update from sunday.

eventually :)

got at the match at 830, worked it for hours. rah had his utility run through at 1:15 or so -and he was AWESOME! im very pleased, since this is the first time we've put all the pieces together in a show type situation. we ran the A-pattern.

signals were ok - used the stick on the ground and he overstepped the first one, i put him back, reheeled him up and stood him, and then he did an awesome down/sit. i didnt call him to me, i released him from there since he was so good.

articles - the one icky note. set up, sent him for the article and he missed the metal article, sent him back out and he found it. he found leather immediately. i did a right pivot for this today because he's been such a butthead for the left pivots -f or him right now at least on articles and gloves (his two hard things) its much less demotivating.

gloves - right pivot to glove 1 and he was great. it was a PERFECT pivot terry said. woohoo. right, of course. not going to argue with left pivots right now. keep training.

moving stand. stick on ground, stood him - he stepped over it but held the stay so i didnt make an issue.

directed jumping - we had 2 sticks down in the center to ensure straightness, and 2 at the stanchions to give him a target. "looked" him, sent him, PERFECT turn and sit 2-3 feet from the stanchion (which is technically too close i guess, per our conversation after the judges seminar kathy went to with terry, but ill take it!) rah is too fast and too big to start calling him off 5 feet from the gates - because he needs as much room as possible. my goal of course is to NOT have him touch the gates - and one of the ones he did was amazing. did two straight, third he pulled up so i walked him out and showed him the toy he "missed" (tricky tricky mommy!), sent him again, and did bar jump. perfect front, didn't ask for a finish. sent him again, gREAT go out, fast accuurate straight turn and sit - high jump PERFECT, lovely front.

all in all, very pleased with that. i know it will all break down again, but im happy he's at the level he worked at!

berlins run was next in novice - she was a pistol outside the ring. barking, jumping, biting (YES!) - had great attention into the set up. did heel on lead - their comment was she's not necessarily out of position, but sometimes she just floats back 2-3 inches. I KNOW. did the fig8 about 1212212 times because kathy worked us hard - she falls back and lags just a bit on the outer post, so we worked on where i will pop and motivate her and she was ROCKING by the end, yay!

sfe was perfect. transitioned over to HF, had her on a light pull tab. started heeling and kathy told me i needed to PUSH OUT, i was going way too slow. and i was also slowing down on all the turns, which just made her slow down too - she made me do little almost pivots in place for all the abouts and berlin was WHIPPING around them. my only sadness is i didnt have a clicker on me to click them!!! but they heeled me a ton extra and berlin was kicking butt there, tons of attitude. played with her after, jumping up - intermixing tug with juust playing with me, back to tug, back to me.

set her up for the recall - not SUPAfast, but a brisk trot, and into a perfectly straight front. then spent almost a minute just playing with the ring, mixing it up again. kathy said we got her to break out a bit, i was happy. definitely had more attitude!!! we talked about conditioning her to certain things in the ring to expect them to be her reward.

rah's open run was actually the worst of the day (ironic, since he's the one dog showing, and that's the class he's showing in?!?!?!?!?!!?) - i did the B class since he's going to be entered in B soon *YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT< IM GOING TO ATTEMPT TO FINISH HIS CDX FROM THE B CLASS* - did order 3, which would be our IDEAL order i think. started with ROF - terry said some judges will let you heel IN with the db, which would rock! set him up, and he tried to take the jump. set him up again - not a bad front without his box. gave up the db, set him up for the drop. perfect drop (strong signal NO BODY MOVEMENT KIM), and he hit a PERFECT FRONT. terry said DO NOT finish him, let him savor the position of a perfect front!!!!!

moved to ROH next - not bad overall, made him wait for TWO send your dogs (evil mom i am). worked on take its and giving him the db back so he will be happy to bring it to me.

broad jump, he missed the front by a hair the first time, played a game a second time and he nailed the third one.

heeling - theoretically by this time his heeling should be a little more controlled beacuse she should be a BIT tired in the ring, but the converse may happen - he may be high as a kite and be crazed. who knows - we can try! he was forgey as all get out and jumping up in my face, so we did a lot of left turns into him.

ahhh.... dogs.

afterwards, came home for a quick nap and then went to chris s's place of uber-acreage to run rah rah and berlin with bogey, her male. bogey is still showing, and raisin his mom (yes, THAT raisin - blue chip's purple reign and all those other titles) stayed in the house while we hiked. the property was beautiful, both dogs got to play in water and had a BLAST>

came home and the slept almost immediately. so did i :)