Opposite Day

Yesterday was cold, cloudy, windy and misty. I even started a fire to keep the house warm. Today is sunny, hot, and humid with little to no wind. If you have never been to Missouri-that's pretty normal.

It was too nasty to go out and train yesterday, we needed a day off anyway. So instead all four dogs and Icy got bathed and groomed. Which they were not impressed by.

I don't think they were impressed by going out on this muggy afternoon to work either but we did. Lyric is doing great-she's doing the chute by herself but I need to work her on different chutes with darker, heavier cloth to make sure she is really ok with it. She's gradually doing the weave poles with less and less help and the less help she needs the faster she is doing them. Sometimes she runs between the tire and the frame if it's not a straight shot so that is something we are working on. She also needs work on rear crosses and sending out to obstacles but that will come with time. And it's probably not a skill we need master right away since she's an 8 inch dog running a novice course and I'm pretty fast too!

I started working with Legend on the dogwalk today. I put a treat on a target at the end and then sent her over from the other end. Sure enough, just like the weave poles she didn't have the confidence/understanding to go all the way to the end without me, even though she knew there was a treat/target there. She slowly caught on to going to the end but did want to cut it a little short and and step off the side. I insisted she go all the way down and get the treat though. I also need to be standing on alternating sides as she finishes so she's not always looking one way for me to throw the ball or call her back to me. I did find that I can send her away from me to a single bar jump from about 30 feet out, so that was good. I also set up a straight line of jumps and ran her through while I was increasingly greater lateral distance. I plan to move each jump a little more laterally so she has to keep moving out away from me while I run a straight line-that seems to show up in Chances classes a lot.

I think I'm going to focus on Tracking with Zodiac for awhile. He seems kind of burnt out on the utility stuff. If he seems more interested after a break then we will work on it again, if not, we'll see.