Back to training

Started back at Sevenoaks last night and Thomas has been moved up a class which means a)not such a rush to get there and b)we get a bit longer for training.

Tom was very excited to be back and I thought he was going to be very sniffy but he actually worked very well. The first half of the lesson we were with Mac, he had set up jumps and a tunnel in a circle around the A frame and we were working on sending into the tunnel and getting tight turns to go over the A frame. We also did some stuff on turning the dogs away from you over a jump which I was having great problems with because I kept forgetting to change arms from the one closest to him pushing him on to bringing the other arm across to turn him while trying to remember what direction it was. Poor Tom he tries so hard to understand my body language and I don't really help him sometimes. We also had to put them through the tunnel then turn round and immediatley put them back in. I was trying to work out how to do this quickly and decided to just say 'right, right' which turned him 180 degrees and back in the tunnel I was most impressed as it worked really well, not sure if it would work if he was working ahead of me but something to try in the future methinks. Going over an obstacle then turning straight round and doing it again is not something I would normally do as it seems to teach them to back jump but Mac and Wendy have both had courses where they've had to do this so wanted us to work on it incase it is the 2008 'fashion'.

The second half was with Wendy and we had the weaves, dog walk and seesaw. Tom is still a bit unsure on the seesaw so I only did it once and made a big fuss of him. He's started to anticipate the stop on the dogwalk so I was trying really hard to get him to run right to the end using targets, he has no fear on the dog walk and really whizzes across. I was most pleased with his weaves last night as even though he popped out when I pushed him too hard the second time, he was looking straight ahead for the entry and while he was in them. I stood upright and he went through really well but not super speedy but a darn sight faster than Dudley does them.

More training on Friday.