one of those days when I should have stayed at home. Admittedly there were some really good bits, he's really started to turn tightly over jumps at times and he is really enthusiastic about training BUT he was having real problems waiting. He twitched and danced about as if we had never done any work on him waiting and after a while I was finding it very hard to just keep going back to him and putting him where I wanted him and trying again without getting cross. He was back to stopping half way down the dog walk and Mac suggested I waited until he moved down himself before saying anything and I have to say he did start to get the idea.
My handling was crap at times and I didn't really help either Tom or Suzi but was definatley worse after the glass of bubbly we had to celebrate one of the club member's first 1st. This a tradition at Sevenoaks when someone wins out or get's there first 1st it's nice but you can tell who had a glass:)
Tom has started to get really good entries into the weaves but kept popping out at number 10 and we couldn't see why, I tried using my hands to guide him, putting them behind my back and in my pocket but he still kept popping out until Wendy suggested using my opposite arm to guide him, it seemed to work but I'll see tonight.
It was freezing on Wednesday night and poor Suzi was really cold by the end of the class so I was really glad that I'd taken her coat with us. She always looks pathetic when she's cold and really shivers.
I had something happen when running her that I'd never had before, I'm used to loosing sight of my dogs but I've never had it where the dog lost me! She came out of the pipe tunnel and had to go up the dog walk, there was plenty of room between them so I thought I'd race her along the dogwalk and shouted up as she was in the tunnel, I don't think she heard me as when I looked round to work her contact she wasn't there and was looking round for me back by the tunnel, she suddenly spotted me and came racing up the school. She looked so relieved to see me I had to laugh, the others said she came out of the tunnel and it was as if she'd hit a brick wall, perhaps she needs glasses:)
2 comments:
Hopefully our lesson will go ahead on Wednesday as the ground's drying out well. We'll do some startline work and also try to get him a little more independent in the weaves.
Sounds like there's lots of positive things happening but when you're in the midst of it sometimes you just focus on the negatives!
Ahh I could just imagine little Suzy looking for you! Bless!
Sometimes popping out of the 10th pole has absolutely nothing to do with your handling but is a sign that he is not 100% solid on the poles. Try Practice on more than 12poles and maybe put some wires back on for a little while or open the poles up slightly depending on how you originally taught them?
Pax used to have trouble with popping at the 2nd to last pole when she was young. Even once she did the 60 weavepole challenge and popped out at the 58th pole! ha!
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