The biggest problem I have with keeping up the blog is that the only time I can write something is when it's way past my bed time and I can barely connect two words together no matter what language I use. Writing a coherent sentence - forget about it! Some people could argue though that I have a problem with coherent sentences no matter what time of the day it is:-)
Thursday night is the night when we go to the group class. We usually have two classes - 6pm open class and 7pm "continuing education" class. Both classes are fun and I try to get to both, that way I can work one dog in one class and another dog in another class. Getting to class that is 45 min away by 6 pm is not an easy thing to do, though. Tonight I was running really late so I had decided to only bring Mozart with me, which turn out to be a right decision as every one was just doing open run thrus.
It is very easy to see the exercises I like to work on and those that I don't. Drop on recall is not my favorite and it was quite apparent tonight. I do find DOR to be pretty boring. It requires a lot of molding of the dog from the stand into a fold back down. Developing muscle memory in the dog requires hundreds of repetitions and I cannot possibly do more than five in a row before we are both bored out of our mind. I did try to focus on DOR daily during the last month and I think there is definitely a progress, but I only yesterday started putting it together with the recall. (Mental note to myself, that next time I have a puppy I should just teach down from the stand while the puppy is still young, I think it will make things whole lot easier)
The blasted broad jumps is another exercise that takes enormous amount of repetitions. As my friend Laura would say - "Blah!". And lets not forget the figure 8. I am not really a big fan of teaching heeling in general. I don't hate heeling, I just don't like teaching it to the dog:-) when all moving pieces are in place heeling is quite enjoyable. You are probably wondering what do I like to teach? Well, I am a big fan of utility. It's just so much more fun than anything else, but here is the bummer - you cannot get to utility until there is a good foundation in place.
Starting the beginning of July I went back to keeping a training log. This had been a great help in tracking what I had worked on and what I hadn't worked on. I finally had decided that I should wrap up our novice work so we don't have to worry about it anymore, that meant that heeling and figure 8 needed a good amount of work, but pretty much all novice work needs polishing and proofing.
Tonight I was very impressed that the work I put into figure 8 last week was really showing! If we could make that much progress in just one week, maybe things are not too bad. He almost didn't bumped me on the inside and almost didn't lag on the outside. It wasn't perfect but it actually looked like a figure 8! His straight line heeling was pretty good too and no bumping, but his halts had fell apart again. Darn it! I did spend a good amount of time straitening out those sits. Tonight he was sitting perpendicular to me. I think it's probably due to him being so worried about all those dogs sitting around the room and watching him. The class was packed and I could see his concern with all those dogs around. His lack of speed on both of the retrieves were another proof of that.
Overall I was pretty happy with his run and I am pretty sure as he will become more confident he will pick up the speed. Bottom line, we'd better hit some matches and I probably should start thinking about setting up a date for our novice debut.
Our instructor definitely pushing us in to the ring, but I am dragging my feet. From my experience showing Brandy I had concluded that if you put your dog in the ring, you'd better keep her there, otherwise by the time you are ready to go into open, you have to start almost from scratch in acclimating a dog to the trial environment.
Knowing that showing in novice past our title is not something I want to do and can't really afford time wise or money wise, I think I'd wait going into novice till we are almost ready for open, although originally I wasn't planning on going to novice with him till we are almost ready in Utility, which is not going to happen before the next summer the earliest and that probably is very optimistic.
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