a little privacy...

so today we had a private lesson to work on a few issues.

started with roo and our off leash heeling issues. the biggest thing is keeping her attitude up and working her off leash all the time, and keeping her sassy - when she's on, she's in my face and working it. when she tunes out, she just wanders. i need to not leave her hanging - if she's not working, she's in a rest or in a crate (crate now, since with being in heat and wearing sexy pants she cant hold stays at all). anyway we played games and worked them straight into set up and then a short spurt of heeling. i have a new focus point for her to look at, so im not accidentally pushing her all over - it worked great. she was actually pushing up into heel position to make eye contact - and the nice thing about where im looking is that it keeps me straight!

also need to work on about turns with her - she sees my cue and responds the wrong way, so im going to have to speed her up around it with the right hand.

we discussed my plans for the future with her - terry doesnt think i should show her at nationals, which is fine by me. if she's not ready, she's not ready. intead, she says match her everywhere, but she should be ready to come out in jan and clean up. if she has issues, just be prepared to pull her. im fine with that - i do NOT want to rush her, im ok with holding her out. at matches and in training, she says do NOT do full patterns - do short spurts and break her out. she shouldnt be heeling the pattern until 2 matches before the show, and the match before just play a lot of games. she needs to get more excited for all this.

worked rah's ring entrances - he's a scanner. great attention into the ring, taking the leash off - then he drops his head when we move for a few seconds and scans all over. worked that into a set up. he also drops sometimes with the ready because hes looking to see if there's something to retrieve out there.

worked retrieves - once we trade the db for the toy, i need to have him on a slip lead to make sure the game is with me, and not running loose. but she was happy with the intent to get to me - fronts werent perfectly straight, so we need some loose guides out there. and his pickups were fast but he took wide turns out there - but again we havent worked them in awhile and he has just got retrieves back in the past few days. she says the ball should be there for at least another month.

we had a little time left, so she wanted to work his signals - she says he's at a level where he can handle a lot more distraction than the other dogs in his utility class, so we worked on signals with heavy distraction - played some games when he LOCKED onto that stand despite terry waving her arms, walking tightly around him, etc. then we went to put the drop in, but he was so locked into me and waiting for a cue, that he started interpreting everything i did as a signal - me breathing because a signal!!!! so we had to work through that!

we finally got him through it (no eye contact!!!) and talked about showing/matching him. ill enter OA at nationals for one day, but then B for the rest of the trial so that i can move up and back and forth between utility if i want.

she also thinks it will be better for berlin not to be stressed with me having multiple entries at nationals - she needs more time for me to devote to her. especially since ill be doing ob and rally with rah and maybe ob for mercury!!!!