Three Dog Training

It’s Sunday so we have pretty much wrapped up our training challenge for this week, but I think I’ll save that post for tomorrow when I can post with some video. This morning is our “play” day where I don’t have much of a set plan and instead just fool around, so I decided I would take the pups to the training building after lunch and play around. I loaded the 2x2s into the car so Payton could play with them in another new location, grabbed Auggie, Payton, and Georgie, and off we went.

P started with 2x2s. We’re having some major problems as of yesterday when I started to close them up, and as they did last time before we backtracked and started over again, he’s had a serious setback. I did work him back to where he was before I started closing them up, but of course, the last several well done and hard entries were AFTER my camera ran out of battery power and it stopped recording.

Next I set up a curved tunnel and a jump for Auggie and worked on some rear crosses. We’ve had some issues with tunnels lately. It’s possible he is having some vision problems, or it could just be he’s a brat and it’s a training issue. So we worked that. I’m still not happy with how it went and I think I know what to work on with him next week.

Georgie came out next and she got to run through the straight tunnel. She LOVES jumping so I went ahead and let her take the jump before and after the tunnel a few times. Working on naming “tunnel” and “jump” both with her now.

P came back out and did more of the tunnel and I let him do the jump as well. Did some beginning one jump work where sometimes I would let him over the jump and take the tunnel and other times I would switch sides and he needed to come to me instead of take the tunnel, and not once did he take the bait of the tunnel and ALWAYS read my handling and came to me. Hurray for Payton!!

I brought Auggie out again next and was putting the tunnel away and he jumped into it while I was putting it away. So I had a fully collapsed tunnel and Auggie was sitting in it barking at me. “I’M IN THE TUNNEL WHERE IS MY COOKIE?” This dog. I moved the jump out of the way too and we just did flatwork where I encouraged speed on him. He did awesome. For his last two cookies I just did some off leash heeling because I wanted to let him cool down some and he was awesome with that too, because he’s Auggie and he’s usually fab.

Georgie came out for some flatwork next. We’re having a problem with her bouncing like you could see in the impromptu flatwork video but I got her really tired before long and that stopped. She kept trying to sneak behind me and dart to the wrong shoulder at first but after a few reps I got her going to the proper shoulder and switching sides with me and doing really great. Flatwork is really the biggest skill she is in need of right now, more than any kind of obstacle introduction.

I brought Payton out for more 2x2s, and like I said, this is where we seemed to heal his problems and get his skills back to where they were before I tried closing up the poles. I think we are just going to work at this stage for at least a week before I try to close them up at all and REALLY try to reinforce four poles… I’ll just say that yesterday I was so frustrated (and so was he) I was ready to say screw it to the 2x2s and go weave-a-matics instead. But I love the theory behind 2x2s so I am going to try and stick it out some more. I can ALWAYS quit and go to the WAMs if he never gets to progressing with the 2x2s. So we’ll give it a bit more time.

After all that, I was dripping sweat, so I packed all my stuff back into the car and we came back home. I could use a second set of 2x2s to leave at the training building – it would sure be nicer than having to pack mine up and drag them with us! Let’s put that on the list of things I’ll buy when I win the lottery.