Training Updates

Zodiac's utility has been up and down. The other day we had an absolutely disastrous article practice. I don't know what was wrong. Today we worked on signals and directed jumping outside. It was so-so. Then we did articles inside. Much better than the other day. It's been about 9 months since last summer when we did a "practice" trial. I wish I could say there has been a lot of improvement in consistency and understanding but I don't think it's as much as I'd hoped for. And we haven't done tracking since fall. I need to get on that again. So many dogs, so little time.

Legend is doing fine. She's back up to getting her weave poles most of the time. I forgot to mention she nailed all of them at the trial. She's also doing well with open obedience exercises. If she could get over all her trial stress everything would be great!

Lyric is doing different sequences-pinwheels, serpentines, 180s, etc. We are also working on rear crosses and sending to obstacles. She's a trooper!

Trip is doing soooo much better on house breaking. I can actually get away with not watching him like a hawk and taking him out every 15 minutes. Which is great because since he's out of his crate a lot, he is tired more! Just a little while ago, he laid down on the living room floor to take a nap! We are however having a problem with him in the morning. He wakes up and wants to potty around 5:30, which is fine, but he won't go back to sleep. He wants to bark for an hour and then he finally goes back to sleep until the rest of us are ready to get up. Some mornings I put him outside. He still barks some but we can't hear it as much and eventually he goes off to play or just hangs out on the deck. He likes to sit in the lawn chairs as you can see in the picture! Next week he gets neutered-all ready to adopt! Any takers? He's a great dog, but he needs his own home where someone has lots of time for him. All his cute puppy days are getting wasted on us!