Bonding

At the beginning of the season I had some comments that Tom and I didn’t seem to have quite got the ‘I want to work for you’ bond yet which at the time upset me a bit as I thought we had bonded well especially as we’d only been together since he was 8 months old. I got over that and really thought about what they meant, it wasn’t that they thought we didn’t love each other on a day to day basis just that with agility we weren’t working together as a team in the way we might have if I’d had him as a puppy.

Dudley and I are soul mates I’m sure, we seem to pick up on each others moods and always go back to each other even if we’ve been distracted by other things. Suzi is too clingy for me and annoys me by wanting to sit on me, touch me and lick me all the time when I’m with her to the point where I have to get Dad to call her away from me, it’s very endearing but also intensely irritating as she will insist on sitting on my boobs !! Now Thomas has always loved to sit on my lap but has always been more into Dudley and Suzi than me and will play for hours with them and I love watching their interaction so have probably not spent enough one to one time with him after the first couple of months other than at agility. He also used to sleep in a crate and even though it was in my bedroom I don’t think this helped, don’t get me wrong I think crates are fantastic and he uses his as his bed it’s just that I don’t shut him in at night anymore, and he now sleeps on my bed with me and Dudley (and both take more than their fair share) and first thing in the morning we have big cuddles and then he snuggles in to me for that ‘extra five minutes’. I don’t know if this has made the difference but things seem to have changed and although he does still sniff a bit he comes back as soon as I call, mostly, and then gets on with the job.

OK now I’ve done the deep and meaningful bit I have to say my legs are killing me this morning and I’m not sure if it’s the lesson I had last night with Nancy or the walk at Ide Hill I took the boys on afterwards which was very hilly either way I’ve got Supadogs tomorrow so hopefully they wont feel so bad by then.

I felt that the lesson went really well and even though I still think I need the ‘nice dog shame about the handler’ T shirt I came away feeling really positive with both my handling and Tom’s work and with ideas on some points to do with how I do pull and push throughs which included the patented Obay pointy finger and also with our dog walk which I will do some more research on before I tell you what we talked about (handler/trainer secrets :)). Driving and stopper arms were used a lot too and I’m hoping that my driving arm will stop flapping about uselessly from now on but I can’t guarantee it so if any of you see me doing it you have my full permission to point it out to me as I come over the finish line.

That’s enough for now hope to see many of you at Supadogs and I’ll try and be a good blogger on my days off as I’m not doing every day.