Weekend Highlights

On Saturday, we did a seminar with Shannen at Wet Creek. The courses were Masters level, but we broke them down, did the first half, then the second half, then the entire course.
The first run I took Blast out, but he was his usual distracted self, so we did a few obstacles & after he ran off a few times, I ran out of patience & put him away. I brought him back out after all the other dogs ran & did a bit & rewarded lots & he was improved. After that he got much better & did some great things. His contacts still need work, & if he has a long run to the weaves, he just bypasses them, so that's something to work on this week for sure.
The second course I let Bizzie have a turn. She did really well, some it is is beyond her, but we worked through it & she did very well. She's actually learning to wait at the start line! (well, most of the time)
The final course was Blast's turn again & he did much better. Had some advice from Anneli (who has a similar dog that she's worked really hard with) & she suggested using a really visible treat, like a weiner, so I'm going to try to wag my weiner around at our next practice!

Sunday was our CAA practice. We had some gamble stations set up at one end of the arena, & a short standard type sequence at the other end & we all rotated through the stations. This can be quite tricky when you have 3 dogs all at different heights!
Boo had some trouble with the gambles, so we need to practice more gambles I guess, although I've been trying hard not to practice too much with him since he's running very enthusiastically right now.
For Blast, I got my weiner out & it worked really well, although, note to self here, weiners & fingers look a lot alike! (There wasn't too much blood!)
Anyhow, Blast ran the best he's ever ran... payed attention, ignored another dog when it ran up to him (which was huge!) got his weave entry at speed... I couldn't have asked for more - he was a really good boy.
Bizzie surprised me & did really well too - I did some pretty tricky rear crosses in tight places & she read them well (which is something we've really just started working on a little more).
We need to get a plan to work her running contacts, since she's vaulting off the dogwalk. Her weavepoles were really good, got her entrances at speed as well, so she was a very good girl too...
She did have one run off to the corner to smell something really good, but her start lines were better. All in all it was a great practice!