Woke up on Monday feeling really rough so have had a few days off and as I haven't got the internet at home (how old fashioned I hear you say) I haven't been able to update Thomas' blog this week but a lot has happened with his training and I've managed to drag myself off my sick bed to make sure he hasn't missed out.

Last Friday we were at ANJU and worked on contacts and going on over jumps which mainly he is very good at but is also very good at nipping behind me to do the stuff he likes and to avoid stuff he doesn't quite understand. Leah recommended a DVD to watch so I'm off later to Google and see if I can get a copy.

Wednesday night was Sevenoaks night and we did some more taregting over jumps and contacts, in my view you can't do enough of this as along with a good solid wait you really need for them to work ahead confidently and not keep looking back at you.

Yesterday I went for a private lesson with Yvonne Croxford at PACE (I'm not made of money honest I just enjoy my training) The instructors I have are brilliant and encourage me to go to different people so I can see what works for my dogs. Yvonne uses weave guides with upright weaves and I really think this method seems to be the best for Thomas as he was whizzing through faster than Dudley and nearly as fast as Suzi and the guides meant I could encourage him without the risk of him popping out if I was too enthusiastic.

Yvonne works to targets too so we have been just building on what we do at ANJU and SDDTS but one to one which I have really enjoyed even though I'm knackered at the end of the hour. One to one also gives me chance to work on our directional commands without thinking I'm taking up other peoples training time when I get it wrong, which is fairly frequently. To be honest I think Tom may work to my body language rather than what I'm actually saying at the moment but he does know left and right as it's something we do at home all the time.

We also did front crosses and snakes using left and right which he picked up very quickly too but I've found that when he get's tired he gets easily distracted and goes off to have a sniff, working outside at Yvonne's will hopefully help with this too as there is nothing worse than having a dog run with his nose constantly on the ground. Dudley does this sometimes but I think he uses it as avoidence rather than that he's found an interesting sniff.