ok so it took me awhile to put down in writing the wonderfulness :)
the main things i wanted to work on was rah's straight sits when i halted, which meant i needed to work on my footwork, which has always been a problem.
i left rah in a down and terry had me heel and called some halts. clearly i sucked - she told me to take shorter strides, and go faster. she then showed me what i am doing on my halts and how that looks to rah, who is getting conflicting messages with my halt - i stop, but i am bending my knees so it looks like we are still moving- he doesn't know what to do! i heeled on my own for about 10 minutes and did random halts on my own, and then i picked rah up and started heeling with him. didnt use a leash - just did it all off leash, and worked on my footwork. and voila...
me doing the correct footwork results in rah doing straight sits. rah was probably like - what TOOK YOU SO LONG. it was amazing. terry also started calling turns and talked me through the turns with him and how I was using my entire body to turn him, which made a not so lovely picture. I was able to feel the difference between wrong and right on that as well, and Rah was doing lovely turns by the end. We even brought out the figure 8... by the end she was throwing out toys on the floor, walking right into us, and just in general trying to distract us to get Rah too distracted to sit so I could correct him into the sit (since when he's distracted the first thing he does is not sit), and we worked on him being distracted and how to set him back up and work through it.
I've got to keep working on this and I want to set up my next private ASAP with her... I'm going to have to videotape the next one!
I'm going to have to do a lot more work just on my own and heeling things without any dog involved at all, just working on heeling patterns, footwork and body position.
WOW. just wow. I hope this progress stays with us.
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