mish mash

this will be a mish mash sorta update!!!

first, now that berlin is off 100% crate rest she will need a refresher on what it means to listen to mom and not bark all the time :) bad bad girl! shes still not allowed to be a normal somjen dog, so shes separated from the rest of the household most of the time and isn't allowed to jump or wrestle yet...

last night she worked the full article pile!!!!! yay good for her!!! which means i guess that i have to do full ATC now and work this daily with her for the next 9 weeks or whatever it is - but she made the right decisions in ignoring the leather articles when the one i had scented/cheesed was a metal. what a very brave and smart girl. whats that, 9 or 10 finds the first week????

we had agility class this wednesday - clearly berlin is not allowed to be doing agility yet, and ive already paid for this class so i ended up running a modified course for rah since i wont put him over this dog walk.

rah was crazy but awesome - super fast, read all the crosses extremely well and gave it his all - managed to not bite me even ONCE!!! now if i could only teach this dog to weave on anything smaller than 24 inch weaves we'd be set :) it just takes him 2-3 tries to get his body into the weaves before he gets it... and if i could decide if i want to trial him or not with his heart disease... i think i might trial him in NADAC and only indoors... low jump heights, very low key, and i can train in the ring, and he already has a jumpers leg, and he can do that beloved tunnelers course. he was so crazy that he was jumping the 36 inch wing jump standards on the rear crosses with room to spare - this dog is amazing and crazy at the same time - but handled like a dream. he was so excited to be back at agility...

hung out for a long time wednesday for his utility class. don't think we did signals that day - we did do them on thursday though and he was pretty good. had a lot of distraction that day (th) including terry stomping her feet next to him, kris behind me giving my signals as well, and gene next to him waving his hands around. rah handled it well but he wasnt sure what to do with the stomping feet so he froze halfway up on the sit, so i verbally told him yes, he was doing it right and we kept going. all in all it was good.

moving stand - both days he didn't do such a bad job but i need to keep remembering that i need to really focus on maintaining his eyes drilling into me - he's not moving but hes not maintaining 100% focus on me, he's staring at the judge as they approach. at least he didnt anticipate the forward there :) i think im going to use a signal for that forward too.

articles - on wednesday there was a glove out in between him and the article pile - he kept going to the glove first, but once he got past that (with a little help from me, ha) his article pile was set within one square foot and on top of each other - but he managed to find his just fine!! on thursday we had no problems with the articles and he even ran in for a straight front!!!! nice job!!!!

go outs - we're still tweaking things because rah now feels that he has theright to go out and check out his go out toy no matter what (on the "ill get to you in a minute" plan) - so i followed him out and butt pinched him to remind him that when i say his name, he needs to turn immediately and ignore the toy behind him (whether or not its there) and sit immediately. the next night kathy had me turn and sit him very early and call him off at 20 feet or so and he did nicely. of course, then on directed jumping rah ran chest first into the jump - we got him over it and he was stutter jumping a bit but had he been paying attention instead of staring at the gloves that were on the ground by the jump he wouldnt have had such a problem :)

gloves gloves gloves - really need to work on these pivots with him keeping his head up and looking at me and not staring at the glove instead. which is going to be his downfall. i also need to make sure i dont keep pushing him backwards by staring at him.

ugh. time to work on these things. our next trial is 2 weeks from today.