Saturday Morning Training

It's been forever (it seems like) since Red and I have been able to make it to class on Saturday morning. I haven't done ANY training with Red for a few weeks, so we were long overdue for some training. I was dead tired this morning but Red was raring to go. It was evident that I wasn't really with it this morning because it wasn't til I got there that I realized I had 2 different tennis shoes on...

There were only three of us there today - me and Red, Michelle and Maisy, and John and Jackson. So it wasn't as structured as usual and there was free time to work on our own things individually.

Heeling - getting better with more attention. Did it off-leash this time. We didn't heel as long today, which is good because sometimes I feel like we do it for too long and both of us get tired. Ended on a good note after a particularly good 360 right turn and great focus afterwards.

Figure 8 - also improving though still a little bumping on the inside. I have no idea why, but Red keeps his head down the entire time during the figure 8. I don't understand why this is any different from any other heeling we do? I get the feeling he doesn't like this exercise. Not sure what I should be doing about this.

Stand for exam - excellent, no problems here.

Recall - the shining moment of our morning. Red gave me a perfectly straight front on recall!!!!! I was floored - I can't remember him ever doing such a great front on recall. He earned himself a jackpot for that, and lots of exuberant praise and play. Hopefully he keeps it up!

Sit/Stay - did it on our own since the other two were working on different exercises. Which was good because it was a good distraction for Red. He did great, no problems.

Dumbell - still retrieving really well. He seems to want to let go too soon so I sort of teased him a couple times to proof his hold. He dropped it once, and I said "oh no! What happened?" and he promptly picked it back up and held it til I took it.

Jumps - starting to work on sending out to the jump instead of running by it with him. He seems to be picking it up. He definitely knows the word "over" and he loves to do the jumps, so that's good.

I had him off leash for everything today except the figure 8. He just followed me around and was a very good boy. There was an agility tunnel set up so I had him go through it a few times, which is good for him.