nedelja, 25. april 2010

Starting the new "work season"


We still need to work A LOT on Wi's self-control while working with water & cold game. At the beginning she was as over-the-top as she could be but towards the end she calmed down a lot and she was able to work without losing her head completly. She doesn't have the same problems while working with game on land so we'll work from there and then start to work near the water and then in the water when she'll have more control over herself.





Oh and yesterday she managed to open the door of my room while I was away and eat the whole family lunch. So when I got home I was greeted by a sight of one red stuffed pig on the doormat. She could barely move for 2 hours but she's OK now. You can still see she's a little "fuller" but other than that she's the same (still acts like she hasn't eaten in ages...). :)

sobota, 10. april 2010

Brushing off the dust


Finally time for some updates!

There's not much going on here. I'm pretty busy at the university and the weather has been really bad. As soon as the mud dried up the rain came again and everything turned into mud. So last week we finally had one agility training after the whole winter.
I mostly placed jumps on 65 cm to see how she would jump over them. We warmed up with a bit of running and some low (35-45 cm) jumps and then did some sequences of 3-5 jumps with tunnels. I was surprised at how good her jumping looked. She also pulled ahead and looked really comfortable with the height. She did knock one bar but that was my fault (bad handling!). Her teeter performance was also better than I expected after such a long brak and how it looked a few months ago. Not as fast and confident as on last trainings but still enough speed and independance.
The contacts on A-frame were good but her dogwalk was terrible. If I was ahead of her she did it but if I wasn't she was jumping off like crazy. Hopefully this will go away when we start training more often.


We also got new balance pods and we are learning 101 ways to use them. :) The most popular with Wi is standing on 2 domes (1 with moth left and 1 with both right feet on) and stepping from one object to another by stepping on the pods inbetween (still not done with this one, she needs a little more balance). And then there's a whole variety of standing on the dome on 1-4 feet though 3 feet (left in the air) is her favourite. Or standing on 3 pods with the free leg in the air (working on balancing with front left in the air, other 3 are ok but with this one she loses balance really fast).
We're also doing dummy trainings again. Doing lots of doubles and more difficult singles and every now and then we do some easy blinds and some free search. Also working on her whistle commands. She's still having difficulties with stopping and turning towards me sometimes. She always stops but sometimes that's all she does and it's a bit hard to give her a directional command when she's facing away from me at 60m.

We're going to an agility trial next Sunday. I think this will be our last trial in A1. :)
Also it seems we'll be going to a Canine Freestyle comeptition in Germany in June. Still looking for "the song"...