back to school
Brinny and I went back to an obedience class tonight for the first time in about two years. He was just starting to trial in obedience when he got hurt. I'm pretty sure he can do enough sits in a day (especially if he gets adjusted the day before) to make it through a novice run successfully. So I cautiously returned to class tonight. We've been practicing heeling in the relatively distraction-free environments of the agility barn, on walks and in our cul-de-sac so I was pretty sure he could manage that pretty well. We haven't done any group exercises or SFEs though, so those were a pretty big unknown.
In this class, there is another beardie and a GSD who belong to agility friends. It's really awesome to have a beardie in the class because for some reason beardies find each other endlessly fascinating and if we ever want to trial at a specialty, it will have been great to be able to practice the stays with other beardies around!
Anyway, Brin's heeling was quite good. It needs some cleaning up in spots...typically if his attention gets caught by something other than me. But on the whole it was quite passable. The figure-8 apparently I've been practicing at more like 12-foot centers than 8-foot centers so my part of the team was off - I felt squished and consequently didn't manage the centers correctly. Good to know. I'll go measure 8 feet out in the cul-de-sac and put cones out to practice with (sans dog!)
SFE had a little foot shifting, but far less than I expected given we haven't practiced it at all in two years :-) Down stays pretty far from the other dogs were fine. I didn't ask for sits tonight. And wonder of wonders...we mostly had QUIET. This is a really big deal as the barn owner and instructor is the person we all know who has issues with barking. (She managed to teach Brinny to catch sprayed water in his mouth as a puppy while she was trying to use a squirt bottle to get him to shut up :-)
What he REALLY wanted to do was dumbbell work....but that wasn't on the agenda tonight. Maybe next week as a reward for some really nice heeling...
In this class, there is another beardie and a GSD who belong to agility friends. It's really awesome to have a beardie in the class because for some reason beardies find each other endlessly fascinating and if we ever want to trial at a specialty, it will have been great to be able to practice the stays with other beardies around!
Anyway, Brin's heeling was quite good. It needs some cleaning up in spots...typically if his attention gets caught by something other than me. But on the whole it was quite passable. The figure-8 apparently I've been practicing at more like 12-foot centers than 8-foot centers so my part of the team was off - I felt squished and consequently didn't manage the centers correctly. Good to know. I'll go measure 8 feet out in the cul-de-sac and put cones out to practice with (sans dog!)
SFE had a little foot shifting, but far less than I expected given we haven't practiced it at all in two years :-) Down stays pretty far from the other dogs were fine. I didn't ask for sits tonight. And wonder of wonders...we mostly had QUIET. This is a really big deal as the barn owner and instructor is the person we all know who has issues with barking. (She managed to teach Brinny to catch sprayed water in his mouth as a puppy while she was trying to use a squirt bottle to get him to shut up :-)
What he REALLY wanted to do was dumbbell work....but that wasn't on the agenda tonight. Maybe next week as a reward for some really nice heeling...