Practicing on a mini course

I set up a mini-course in my driveway today consisting of 6 novice stations, plus the Start and Finish signs. I wanted at least a couple left turns in there, a cone exercise, and one of the 1,2,3 halt exercises. I don't have a lot of room on the driveway, so for a bigger course I'll need to either do it on the grass in the backyard, or go to the football field where the grass is pretty short. I would like to set up a full size course and run through it with some call front-halt exercises and left turns, the moving down and the side step right. But maybe I can put some of these exercises in another mini-course next time.

Anyway, here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3yjyvn2hJw

I was very pleased with everything, except the left turns (specifically the full turns like the 270 and 360) still need some work to get his rear to pivot around and tighten up the circle. His attention was good, and had a pretty quick response on all the commands. I think he likes the cone exercises - he always seems to do exceptionally well with those.

I had a pouch full of hotdog bits, which he seemed interested in until the tennis ball made an appearance, then it was all about the ball. So I didn't use any treats for these run-throughs and just rewarded with throwing the ball and then playing with him for a bit.

We didn't drop into the advanced class on Wednesday night because Michelle said they were doing "place" and other things we haven't worked on yet, so I figured we'd skip it. But we are going to the private class tomorrow morning and I'm hoping to get some video of it so I can see what we look from a 3rd person perspective working with these CD and CDX dogs. I love videos! I can really scrutinize my body language - how I'm holding my arms, footwork, etc - and see what Red looks like from another perspective as well. Video has been a great learning tool for me to improve our performance. Plus its great to share the videos and get constructive feedback from experienced Rally exhibitors and judges on how we can improve.