Saturday morning training

Our next rally trial is coming up in 5 days... so it was good I could finally have a Saturday off work to go to the training group on Saturday morning. This will be our first attempt at the Advanced course, so I am a bit more nervous...

Heeling - did it off-leash this time. He did very well at the beginning - very good focus. After awhile, though, he started drifting out in front of me too far, so I put the leash back on him, put it around my back and to rein him into the correct position. I think for short bursts of heeling, like during a rally course, he will be fine. But for the long amounts of heeling we do during training, he sort of got sloppy with it.

Figure 8 - was forging and bumping me a lot at first, then got a lot better. I was taking my inside post too tight, so I need to allow more room. Good quick sits at the halts, and good focus.

Recall - I didn't go too far away from his this time - maybe 15 feet or so - because he comes in straighter for the shorter distances. I want to shape and reward this, then slowly build up more distance. He came to me with more enthusiam this time and we pretty straight, though I still took a step or two back to help get him completely straight before rewarding. No finishes!

Long sit/down - We do the 3 minute sit and 5 minute down. First of all, I didn't set him up right for the sit - for some reason I changed my signal and put my hand out in front of his face when I said "stay" (like a lot of other people do), but this is his signal for stand, so when I did that, he went into a stand. And I never have him sit while in a stand, so I had to release him, then put him in a sit and did the normal stay command. So it was bit confusing to start. Then he broke the sit after not even 2 minutes. He went into a down - I said "ah ah" and started to walk back to him and he got up and started to come toward me. I corrected him with the choke when I reached him, and firmly put him back into position and gave the stay command a bit firmer. He was fine after that to finish out the remaining minute. No reward or praise after that though.
And for the long down, he was completely fine. No problem there whatsoever. Lots of praise and treats after that. I hope he realizes that not breaking the sit/down means lots of praise/treats, and breaking it means a correciton and no reward afterwards.

After we were finished with that exercise, its sort of "free time". So Michelle set up the broad jump for me so I could practice taking Red over it in case they used it instead of a regular jump for my Advanced trial. He'd jump it, but he'd sort of do it sideways in an attempt to get back to me, so he'd jump at an angle and run into my left side. After trying a few different things, we finally got him jumping in sort of straight and calling him back to heel in an effort to get him in the correct position so he doesn't plow into me. Then we set up the regular jump and he did that fine. He got lazy a couple times and kicked it - in which case I didn't reward him - so I'd take him over it again and when he cleared it fine, he received a reward. I hope he doesn't get lazy during the trial...

We finished up after that because I had to get home and get ready to go to Grand Rapids to visit my mom for the day.

We have an obedience fun match on Wednesday, 2 days before the trial and at the same venue as the trial, so we will be able to practice more jumps and everything.