This week has been miserable, so we haven't gotten to do much training. My house isn't that big, so we really don't have space to do it inside. I am petitioning Florida weather to pick somewhere between the 100+ temps and the pouring rain!

The following video sums things up nicely.


As you can see, Duncan is doing great at the home weave set. I like the channel weaves quite a bit. We're at just over half a turn (about 95 degree turn from original open position). As you can ALSO see, we got rained out. I barely got everything inside before the onslaught began! The tugging is working nicely for at home training if it isn't too hot.

Moving on to class. Thane took some video sporadically. We did much more than chutes, weaves, and tunnels. Duncan balked a little at the contacts. He just wasn't focused tonight, but I don't think I was either. Not sure, but we weren't clicking as well as last week. Probably due to lack of practice. Oh well!

Duncan hasn't really had an issue with chutes until today. We finally dropped the cloth all of the way and he got confused. We backed it up and I think he'll do better when we have amazing tunnels. Speaking of tunnels, the few times on the video were some of our best for the night. I think he's confused because for tunnels and weaves, he isn't right next to me. I need to work on distance with him, but I'm afraid of doing too much, too soon (especially considering we are doing two sports with him).

See that pitiful weave? Hear my strained high pitched voice? Gah. That kind of summed up the practice. Duncan found everything he wanted on the floor and only thought about me if I was a lunatic. I think I'm going to pick up my Control Unleashed book again and work on focus exercises.

Brag that isn't on the video: Duncan did the teeter three times without even a flinch! I lured him the whole time with turkey hotdogs and the teeter was smoothly dropped to a medium high wait table by an instructor. We didn't want to over do it, so we left it on a success. I was so proud of my baby.

Sad news - no Flyball tomorrow. It got moved to tonight and we had Agility. I'm going to get some practice in anyway, though!

Tonight, Duncan was definitely 'Most Improved' in his class. Sorry, no videos. My camera batteries died on me. They are being recharged tonight. Hopefully next time, I'll get video evidence.

We started on the A-frame, a previously unattempted stunt due to Duncan's reticence on the dogwalk and other contacts. First, we did it flat. No problem! Over the next three (that's right - THREE) height bumps, Duncan was great. It wasn't full height, but very nearly there. I stopped him while he was still excited about running up and down and not at all scared. It was like he suddenly decided that contacts were good things.

When we switched to the dogwalk, my Dunc got a bit weirded out at the entrance. It is so much thinner than the dogwalk, so he needs to have accuracy. I ended up picking him up and running him off the end a few times, backing him up until he was comfortable running down the end. This seemed to clear that up with him and he could run the whole thing without a problem. The height was maybe a foot and a half high. Still low, but Duncan is definitely getting used to it.

We did the wait table once. Duncan hopped right up and someone else wanted to use it, so we moved on.

Next we did a few jumps, loosening up. Duncan had a barking fit to which I responded by just looking at him and not doing anything to praise him. When he was done, I took him over to the chute and we did that a few times. Duncan was getting pretty good and could have the chute almost to the ground (someone was holding it up and dropping it after each successful go).

We did some tunnel work after this. We were asked to do the tire jump. Duncan would not sit for me, so I asked him to jump through using a 'come' and he did. After this point, Duncan would not sit for me again that night, even if he was attentive and doing well. We were able to do some tunnel/tire jump combos very successfully.

There was a little course of four jumps, the tunnel, then a jump and the chute that we were to try. Duncan refused the tunnel time and time again. First, the instructor asked me to start treating on the ground, since Duncan is SO hand-focused. Duncan still wouldn't enter the tunnel, but if she held him, he would fly through it. Then, my husband Thane came to the rescue. We called Duncan back and forth between us, treating for when he would duck into the tunnel. A few minutes of that seemed to solve our problems.

Duncan ended on the high note of the chute, barking madly the whole way. Believe it or not, that took an hour!

We did not do weaves or the teeter tonight. I want to build some weaves to work with at home. The teeter can wait until Duncan is fully confident with contacts.

Overall, we were very pleased with the work we did tonight and so was everyone else!