Finally - Tuesday's Class!

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! I spent the day with my Cousin Wilson! It rained almost nonstop all day but around 2:00PM we had a little break and mom took Wilson and I outside to play. Wilson fetches the ball and I herd Wilson. Very fun!

Any way, finally a post about my class this week. I was very good again and did everything right! The only problem (not a problem for me, but...) was that I am still scanning the floor for food (of course) and while I keep going and don't actually stop (yay for me), Jenn says it is slowing me down and mom really needs to work with me on it (oh no).

Our skills drill for this week was working on the teeter and independence. I have a good but excruciatingly slow teeter. But I can be recalled over it and can be rear crossed, front crossed, blind crossed, and continue to do it when mom is a long way away from me laterally. So if I ever learn to tip it faster - look out!

The main theme for this class was box work. It was not a very tight box set-up and we did well with it. We also had some tunnel entrance discriminations in the sequences we ran.

We made a video of the part of a sequence that we most want to remember. The first time we did it, mom did a forward motion front cross (fmfc) and it worked well but she needed to remember to get her outside arm up sooner as that is what is cuing me to the turn. The other way to deal with this sequence was to do a lead out and be in the directed jump recall position. I didn't know this but this recall is named after the directed jump exercise in open obedience. Now it makes more sense! Until Tuesday, we didn't really know how to do it (even though mom had studied it).

Here's what we tried in the video:

1. FMFC - late outside arm

2. FMFC - better outside arm cue

3. Directed jump recall - mom is standing behind the right-side jump standard of #2 and trying to face forward where I would be enroute to jump #2

4. FMFC

5. Directed jump

6. Directed jump - mom finally trusted me to take #2 and moves out of position earlier - this is really how it should be

Gotta zoom!

Ricky