Sunday, July 6, 2008

this weeks progress

Ok so training wise:
Chloe: we are still having problems with our weave poles, I swear I am going to figure this out. She was consistently missing pole 9-10, so when she missed it I made sure she got it the next time with a wire tent, or my body position, well, that works and then the minute I move it, wha laa the same problem pops up the next time. So, hummm, not sure what is going on with that. Other than that the class was cancelled this week so I went and worked with Chloe, she was driving to the tunnels, way ahead of me, she is reading my decelerations but still knocking the bar a lot when I decelerate behind a jump, so might have to back up a step (it is usually very rare for Chloe to knock a bar), her contacts a 2O2O that I am not that pleased with was looking marvelous on the dog walk. ON the Aframe she tends to lawn dart and normally she will default to traveling down the down side at an angle which helps but when she gets excited, she goes straight down and cant really handle that. So still more we can work on with Chloe. I am not entering her in trials because she hates the heat so much and I have worked so hard for her enthusiasm and motivation so I am not going to mess with that by having her really start to trial in the heat where I know she will not be comfortable or happy.
Breeze: She is scheduled at the CARE center this week on Friday, hoping that goes well. I got a LOT of pressure about her running this weekend at a trial I took her to just to do some socializing. Why is it that so many people that don't know what is going on and have not seen the problem first hand and haven't even seen the xrays think they know better then the people who have??? FRUSTRATING. She does well at trials but she isn't her normal happy self, I know she is a bit stressed so decided to work on that at some trials while I am waiting to trial again. She is getting a bit batty with her confinement. Poor girl. As soon as I think her gait looks pretty normal, boom she starts some freaky gait so I am just not sure what that is about. Sooo we are just on a waiting pattern to find out what is happening there.
Lizzie: Now here we have some exciting progress. I took her to the yard when class is normally held, but since class was cancelled, there was just a few dogs that came to play with us. There were people waiting for a fourth of July parade around the yard, so some different things and some activity we are not used to. I practiced my Control Unleashed, made sure to get Lizzie's attention before we entered the yard, played some look at that for when I am now recognizing her hyper stressed behavior, and then we went to work. She was marvelous. A couple of times she took off but she was right back with me. We were able to actually do a few sequences and even like the dog walk where I was way behind she drove across the walk and waited in her mat position for me to get there and release her, what a good girl. I took her to a trial on Saturday and we worked on attention and just making her comfortable and working with me. She was very stressed when I got there and surprise, surprise she was all over the place and very hyper. I could not get her to take treats so I forced a few treats into her mouth and put her in a crate where she was out of the heat, out of the way of others and could just watch. I took her out frequently for short periods and she just started doing so well. She was able to walk really well on a loose leash, we played a lot of look at that which just calms her down so well. The only thing I am worried about is that I keep seeing her look at the sable shelties with a look, and she does fight with her sable sheltie sister, so not sure what she is thinking about with these dogs, hope she isn't thinking she needs to go and get one of them. By the afternoon she was able to do jumps and then focus back on me, she was just fine when we practiced measuring her with the wicket, she measures 17 1/2 inches, can you believe she could jump just 16 in AKC??? Lots of time for her to go over the jump, build up even more speed and take off, hahahahhhhaha. We also did the table a bunch of times and she was GREAT, waiting for her release, driving to the table, what a good girl she was. So at home I have not been using her breakfast for agility training, I have been using that for taking her out in the front yard, high excitement place then using it to reward her staying with me, or coming back, she is doing so well. Anyway, so all in all Lizzie is doing great this week.
So got to watch some classmates and friends run this weekend which was a treat. They were so nice and let me hang with them during the day and showed me a lot of support and were very helpful with the work I was doing with the border girls. It was a hard weekend to trial, very hot, a bit on the humid side, not a very crowded trial but crowded enough with the heat. I got to see Breeze brother Batman run with Kristie, he was so good and Kristie is so good, just made me a little sad Breeze is not running but, oooh well. Batman is a beautiful dog and is really coming along very well for sure.
One more week of teaching class, so hoping it wont be too hot. I got an answer back from Red Dawn BC in Texas with two possible agility prospects if I want to get another dog........Found another possibility in Washington but haven't called them, still trying to decide is that is what I really want to do, hoping my CARE center appointment will give me some more info so I can find some answers!!!

1 comment:

ffluffy said...

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