Saturday, November 8, 2008

2nd post today - training update

I figured I'd make this a separate post from the crate post.

Regarding recent training, to be honest I haven't done very much with him since the trial. I've been busy planning my sister's baby shower and now that oud next trial isn't til January, I've been slacking with the training a bit. However, in the past few nights, I've been doing call-fronts from sitting in heel position without moving my feet. He does it perfectly - I am seriously amazed with this dog. I have never done sationary call-fronts with him before, but all I do is say "front" and point between my knees and he comes around in a straight sit right in front of me. No luring, no nothing to get him to know what I want. He's so damned smart!

I'm also starting to incorporate shoulder cues in with my turns and cutting out my verbal cues for turns. He's getting really good at his left turns, staying in nice and tight. I am going to start working on the pivots that the Advanced level in Rally has. And some more of the Advanced signs - for example the jump and returning to heel. I'm pretty sure he will do okay with that.

I have to start doing some new things with him because these novice exercises are becoming old hat for him and I think he'd like to start learning some new things. However I still need to work on a straight front after a recall - he likes to swing his rear out to the side in anticipation of the finish. I'm thinking I might start doing some other activites like introducing the dumbbell and doing send-outs for retrieves. And also starting to work on the back-up for the Excellent exercise. Never too early to start learning that as well. =)

Anyway, I wish I had more exciting progress to report, but like I said, I've been slacking big time. Now that the baby shower is over, I can go back to concentrating on other things. The shower was fun, but it was a lot of planning for me!

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