training update
What there is of it!
Eri is making some nice progress with both agility and obedience. Adding the daily round of clicker stuff seems to be helping his bond with me quite a bit. He's interested in working as soon as I get out the clicker - still has issues with distractions and especially moving dogs as we demonstrated last night at handling class, but he does have longer minutes of absolute sainthood where he can hold a stack and concentrate on me with no problem at all. I think he's going to grow up OK after all. *g*
He did a really nice job on the figure-8 jumping exercise on Monday night with the one notable exception of my trying it with rear crosses (poorly timed rear crosses at that) where he pretty much plowed into my bad knee and left me unable to walk the next morning. His contacts are coming along slowly as is his tire which he rarely ducks any more even at 22" although he does hang up his rear in it on the first try pretty much every time. Weaves....well let's just say I still haven't committed to them. I'm pretty sure when I do, they'll be a lot easier for him!
Meanwhile, Brinny has been recovering from his July malaise. I had my weekends mixed up and just realized yesterday that his next attempt at NW1 is this weekend rather than next so he won't have the one extra week to put more muscle on the rear that I had hoped for before the trial. Oh, and we probably should have been practicing, but in the recent heat and with him feeling lousy, he wasn't working well at all. In the evenings when it cools off, he's more than happy to do a clicker session though and he's making good progress on picking up a metal dog dish and carrying it around. I think I'll turn it into a trick of making a pile of metal dog dishes so he can clang them around a lot since he likes to make noise. I think for the next two days, as trial prep, I'll just do some clicking for terminal behavior at the odor source and hope like the dickens that it translates into good trial behaviors. If not, well, there are other trials...
And here is the gratuitous dirty puppy pic from Monday night after agility practice. Eri sure is growing up!
Eri is making some nice progress with both agility and obedience. Adding the daily round of clicker stuff seems to be helping his bond with me quite a bit. He's interested in working as soon as I get out the clicker - still has issues with distractions and especially moving dogs as we demonstrated last night at handling class, but he does have longer minutes of absolute sainthood where he can hold a stack and concentrate on me with no problem at all. I think he's going to grow up OK after all. *g*
He did a really nice job on the figure-8 jumping exercise on Monday night with the one notable exception of my trying it with rear crosses (poorly timed rear crosses at that) where he pretty much plowed into my bad knee and left me unable to walk the next morning. His contacts are coming along slowly as is his tire which he rarely ducks any more even at 22" although he does hang up his rear in it on the first try pretty much every time. Weaves....well let's just say I still haven't committed to them. I'm pretty sure when I do, they'll be a lot easier for him!
Meanwhile, Brinny has been recovering from his July malaise. I had my weekends mixed up and just realized yesterday that his next attempt at NW1 is this weekend rather than next so he won't have the one extra week to put more muscle on the rear that I had hoped for before the trial. Oh, and we probably should have been practicing, but in the recent heat and with him feeling lousy, he wasn't working well at all. In the evenings when it cools off, he's more than happy to do a clicker session though and he's making good progress on picking up a metal dog dish and carrying it around. I think I'll turn it into a trick of making a pile of metal dog dishes so he can clang them around a lot since he likes to make noise. I think for the next two days, as trial prep, I'll just do some clicking for terminal behavior at the odor source and hope like the dickens that it translates into good trial behaviors. If not, well, there are other trials...
And here is the gratuitous dirty puppy pic from Monday night after agility practice. Eri sure is growing up!