Just when I thought we were going to get back into the groove of things, mother nature decided to trick me. After almost a full week of gorgeous temps, seeing things grow, hearing the birds chirping louder and thinking that winter was behind us, that bitch mother nature dumped 5 inches of snow and ice on us thursday. I am still here on friday, stuck in my house because the roads are solid ice right now. Hoping they can get some salt on them so I can get in and do some work today. I don't think my boss cares that I am missing because of the snow as she knows I will make it up, but I have several weekends in a row of agility so won't be able to just come in on the weekends and work. I am hoping maybe hubby will get off early and he can take me in or maybe take me into work tonight. If i could just get a couple of hours of work done, i would feel better.
Anyway, enough of my whining! I have an agility seminar this weekend at a new place with new contacts and new surfaces. Sometimes new surfaces bother baby-D so looking forward to getting him on rubber mats to see how he handles it. We had great training all week using the treat and train and using the weave pole game to help him search out entries. I thought I had previously blogged about how this was going but the blog must have floated off in lost blog land because it isn't showing up on my blog dashboard. The weave pole game (as designed by lori) is super fun and we train entries on sets of four poles instead of my set of 12. We basically make up a course with these little sets of four and run it just like a course and baby-D loves it. You can make some funky angles, hard entries, straight on entries with lots of speed etc. You make it fun, more like a game, less like work and boy does he love it. I am seeing some seeking of entries and some low weaving like I know he can. He also started wrapping poles better, maybe because he doesn't have to worry about all 12 poles? Who knows at this point, I don't care what changed as long as we can hold on to this change. I also have been incorporating the treat and train in my training so he never knows when that might come into play. I have only been using the set of 12 to work the 10th pole pop out problem. I incorporate the treat in train in here as well because if he stays in, no matter what I am doing, he gets rewarded. If he doesn't, no biggie, back to the start, treat and train stays closed, no reward until you do it right. I have seen a HUGE improvement in our training this week, maybe because we are breaking things down, maybe because we are getting to train more, who knows. I was hoping to keep this trend going till we got dumped on yesterday:( I am dying to get back in the ring and see how things are now. This is the fun of baby dogs, try something, see if it works, re-evaluate and move on. I have been reading today another blogger's post of her journey through handling a novice male dog and let me tell you it has been refreshing to hear her journey and the pitfalls she has had. I have alot of people around me right now that all have baby dogs but for the most part are females with maturity out the ying yang and they are progressing so smoothly in their training/showing. Don't get me wrong, I am very happy for their progress and look forward to being in excellent with them someday:) It is nice to hear and see someone (she posted videos), especially someone I consider an expert, having the same problems, battling through the same training issues. Of course they aren't exactly the same, but maturity is one of the main ones and team work in the ring is another. I love when big name people are truely honest in their blog posts about what is going on, not "my dog is perfect all the time deal with it if yours isn't because I am a big name trainer and you suck." To step inside her head and her training sessions has been fun, to see inside her world has been invaluable. I have also learned alot about ETS which is a problem a few of my friends are battling through with their dogs.
All in all, I have seen some progress this week and I hope it is a trend! I do think getting to work more than once a month is helpful:) The sun is out right now so I am praying for some snow melting and quickly. Will blog more after my seminar, that is if we don't get the wintry mix that we are suppose to get tomorrow morning. I refuse to drive to KC if it is sleeting/snowing!!!!!
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