Training Update

Just thought I'd give a quick update on how our trial training is coming along. We've been working quite hard at our obedience and he is actually enjoying it. He seems to be watching me more on the heelwork and I'm managing to interupt our walks with brief interludes of heelwork, although not on the beach as he is more interested in the little spurts of sand that get kicked up as I walk. Although this is very useful for keeping his attention away from young children and other things I don't want him interfering with it's a bit frustrating when I want to vary where we do our training. Our stays are not 100% reliable yet, although I am managing short (about 10 seconds) out of sight down stays. Recalls are good and yesterday we managed a retrieve using a dumbell instead of a toy. I've put string round it as he wouldn't pick it up before although he was quite happy holding it.

On the agility side of things, I had trouble persuading him to go over the long jump if I wasn't actually moving as in our normal agility I am always running with him. The weather helped as we haven't had the equipment out while it has been so stormy so we came back to it fresh today and low and behold he got the idea that he CAN jump long by himself! Now I must work on lengthening the distance he has to jump up to 9'

To avoid confusion between our normal agility training where he has to jump one obstacle and go straight onto the next as quickly as possible and our trials agility training where he has to do one obstacle and wait for me to go to him I am using different equipment and not training both things in the same session.

We don't appear to have any problem with the high jump and I am only training the scale at Caroles for safetys sake- and because I don't actually have a scale!

Because he seems to lose interest in finding things after he has brought me his favorite object I am trying to use several identical objects for him to bring out of the search area. We have some lovely squishy plastic rings which he absolutely adores so until he gets the idea of going for several items we are using these. I introduced the clicker for this indoors tonight and he thinks it's a great game although he loses the plot a bit after 2. My friend, Ann, says dog can only count 1,2 lots more, whether this is true or not 3, 4 seems very difficult!