Changing Gears

I had been quiet again for over the month. It was a busy month and a challenging one.
I finally came to a decision that I will not be showing Brandy past UD. I simply do not have the time and  amount of money that it takes.

Taking Brandy all the way to the UD required a lot of work and sacrifices. My kids were one of those sacrifices. While they are getting good grades in school it was apparent for quite some time that good grades in American school don't really mean that they know and understand stuff, it simply means that they are like monkeys were taught to do something that they will forget the day after the test.


With Anya heading into high school next year and a college not being too far away, I had decided that my consistent involvement with their home work is absolutely must, especially where math is concerned.
Charlotte is very bright but she is not on the above grade level in math, where her friends are and that's not because she can't, but because I didn't have time to teach her more advanced math unlike other parents did.
I was reading about countries school ranking and although Maryland schools are ranked #1 in the country, I am starting to think that the credit is due to the parents, not the schools. The testing for the magnet programs is in few months and unfortunately I don't thinks I can get girls ready for it in such a short time.:-( But this year the girls academic will be my top priority.

The decision to stop showing Brandy wasn't an easy one, I sure had lots of dreams for our obedience career and she is sure a dog that could go all the way.  Now I just need to come up with a plan to keep her mind busy and active.

With Brandy's retirement Mozart took the number one spot. After doing some assessment it was apparent that our sit/stay and stand for exam is not up to a CD standard.

Mozart has a tendency to bark at some people. It's usually people that are weird in some way or have a strange body language that makes him suspicious. Unfortunately I had seen some pretty weird judges which mean that I need to make sure that he will not pull a stunt like this in the ring and gets himself DQed. That would end his obedience career.

Fixing it is not an easy thing as I can't just go asking strange people to do the exam. Most people are scared of him and it will just make a matters worse.
After some thinking last night, I had decided that the problem with stand/stay stems from poor sit/stay. This means that I will have to go all the way back and reteach sit for exam.
In sit for exam, unlike stand, I can actually correct for breaking the sit stay because barking is in fact a break of the sit stay.

Tonight in class I asked several people  to do a sit for exam for us. Lucky, Mozart decided to bark at one new person and it gave me a chance to work through the problem. With the rest, the goal was to make sure that Moz allows people to do the e am without excessive wagging of the tail and kissing in the face. After a few people and a multiple corrections( thanks Mike for some pointers) He finally strews to grasp the idea of not moving his head too much.

When we came home I realized that tonight is one of those nights when I don't have dinner for the dogs. I went to the store yesterday but for some reason I had only bought one chicken. Instead of being upset I decided to take Mozart and work him at the entrance to the store in hope that there will be at least a couple of people that he will find "strange" and decides to bark at them, plus going at night puts us at advantage as he is more likely to bark in the dark at people than in the day light.

I wasn't disappointed . The first person that came out of the store decided that Moz was really cute and proceeded to make funny faces and gestures waiving to him. As expected Mozart decided to start barking. I quickly put him on the sit stay and gave him a collar pop correction every time he barked. The lady left. After that Mozart decided to bark at pretty much every person coming out of the store. After being corrected every single time, he finally figured it out. From that point on, whenever someone came out of the store and Mozart felt like barking he just turned away and looked at me, getting a very enthusiastic praise in return.

The barking stopped.  I put him back into the car and went to get the chicken, then took Moz out again for a second small session - no barking. We worked on heel position and various turns and called it a day.
When we came home I asked Husband to do the sit for exam. Moz didn't wiggle a single bit even that I know he was psyched to see him. Well, we had definitely made a progress. Now I need somehow to make it carry over on sit for exam when strangers do it.

I am planning to go to a match this sunday and putting Mozart into conformation, novice and BN( if they have it) that should take care of 3 exams. I am hoping I will be able to find volunteers who might be willing to help me with sit for exam outside the ring, although the match being an type "a" match it might not be allowed.