seminar weekend

It was a seminar weekend for both stella and deuce. Originally, the plan was that tony was going to take the puppy seminar saturday morning and audit the running contacts seminar saturday afternoon, I was going to run a 5 K that day with some friends and then I was taking the european handling seminar on sunday. You know what they say about the best laid plans right? Tony ended up having to work so I had to back out of my 5 K, take stella and deuce to KC on saturday and then drive back (2 hours), take care of dogs and get up and do it again on sunday. While I a super tired today, it was well worth it. I ended up auditing the turns seminar (cik and cap stuff) with Deuce and got a better understanding of what it is and how to train it and apply it. We had been playing around with it before but now that i really have a firm grasp of it, will be working on it in earnest. I also really enjoyed the running contacts seminar and had several light bulb moments. I think for sure we will have to buy a dog walk for this to work with stella, I do think she can handle running contacts better than deuce. I also think I am going to revisit the running a-frame with deuce with some new ideas in mind. I also have a way better understanding of how to place the stride regulators. Watching multiple dogs that were taking the seminar that were in different parts of their training really helped. I am hugely visual so seeing the different striding on the different dogs helped so much. Now if I could just move my a-frame out of the poison ivy field so we could practice, that would get me motivated to practice. I do think that I do not have enough room in my back yard to adequately teach him a running a-frame, which might have added to his not being able to do it correctly. He is getting better about not hitting the upside so hard and so high up but it is still is an issue and still affects his ability to vault over the top and stride correctly on the way down. I do think he is more mature now and could handle learning striding better now as I think alot of that is mental as well as physical.

Stella was a little star as we went through the puppy seminar but it was a lot of stuff I already do with her so not really a ton of new stuff. Really wished tony had been there because I could tell as I told him everything I went over, he just looked at me like so what. I really think if he would have heard it from Lori and seen it, he would understand how important it is. I work all my pups really hard on body awareness so she has been on balance discs and a variety of objects with front feet, back feet, all feet, and so on. The only thing I haven't had her do is push stuff so that was fun to try my hand at. I also am going to start working her on the cik and cap stuff and am going to go buy some cones today. All of my cones are too small so need something with a base that is a little bit more substaintial. She is such a little turd, did have to work on her not screaming when other puppies were doing their restrained recalls, but just had to back her way up and work on basic behaviors and then slowly work our way closer. She even got to go play with her bro afterwards and play with another older aussie puppy. So funny to see that her bro plays just like her with the growling and the neck grabbing. She got to go spend some time at Karen's house (brick's mom) while i stayed the rest of the day so I didn't have to worry about her screaming in her crate and interupting everyone's learning experience.

Sunday was deuce's day, even though he got to be out while we did the cik and cap stuff. He was pretty pumped to be the only dog I had there. Boy do I love this dog. We had some tough european courses with challenge one right after the other. I think overall, he did great, had issues finding tough weave pole entries but that is something that will come with time. He always has issues with the one where you are running perpindicular to the poles and he has to get through the first one and then bend back at full speed. He is body aware but still has issues bending. Hoping working cik and cap will help him with this. He is getting better so I think it will come with time. We started handling back sides to jumps differently so need to work on showing him more of the jump before laterally moving to tell him back. Had always just blocked the jump and had him go backside but you won't always be right there to get them. Ended the day doing relay from the european open and my team had to run the course at 12 inches because we had a little dog so that was challenging. I got two Es on my end so I didn't help the team but it was fun so no one cared. I only felt like I had one run where he got stressed but I was frustrated with my self and my handling and he read that wrong, even though I brought chicken for him for screw up cookies. Such a sensitive boy. I will be interested to see how he does this weekend with four days of showing.