Weekend Fun!

Well, I should have known better! In my last post, I mentioned that Blast was paying attention much better & ignoring other dogs, etc... so, as a reminder to me that this dog training is a long & winding path, Blast was quite distracted on Saturday at the Sue Charlton seminar in Olds. Of course this is another fairly new arena for him & new dogs as well. I actually worked Bizzie a lot more but thought I'd give him a chance to come out & work a bit. He didn't want to settle in his crate, & was really antsy most of the day.

Bizzie did really well. I wasn't sure what she could handle since she's never done a full seminar before. Other than running off a few times to check out the other dogs, she listened really well, did some great distance work & actually did a few gambles! I was quite impressed since I've done little distance work with her. She held most of her start lines, which is what we've been doing a lot of work on. It sure hit home with me how much easier it is to do distance work with a faster, more driven dog than with a slower, less motivated dog (Boo). Of course with that also comes other challenges!

Boo didn't get to work, although I let him do a few weave poles during the break. He spent the day in his Xpen crying his eyes out - you should have heard him! OMG what a baby! I guess I shouldn't complain, at least he wants to come out to work now... it wasn't that long ago that he would have been happy to stay there & sleep!

Wayne took Cactus & they did some great work with placing rewards at the best place to take her focus off him, and always using a food pouch instead of feeding her from his hand.

Sunday was our CAA practice, so we did some short, fun jumpers courses & worked some gamble stations. Jumpers is certainly Blast's thing - he so loves to jump. Instead of trying to calm him on the start line, I rev'd him up a bit & he ran really well.

Boo got to work on his gamble skills, which are usually much better in practice than in trials (the power of the cookie!) He now will chase a toy & tug a bit (even with no teeth), which is something I've been working on with all the dogs.

Bizzie did very well again - caught her running behind me a couple of times, so will have to nip that in the bud! She did an awesome "out" to a jump on the far side of the DW, so that made my day!

So, it was a really fun weekend with lots of practice using all of the equipment, which is not something that we get to do all the time!