Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Late Class Post

Well it's taken me six days to get this post written.  Oops.  See my last post for a sense as to why I've been so busy.  Now I'm catching up, though.

On Thursday we all went to DogStar for Jonah's class.  I set up the crate, but Nika was being kind of a jerk.  She would scream the whole time, she didn't want to go in, and she was being a pain and very needy when she wasn't in the crate.  After 45 minutes when she barked at a soft dog on the table right next to us, I just took her back out to the car.  I think that may have been the last time I bring her to Jonah's class.  Time to grow up, girlie.  (In other news, I crated her while I had a conference call today. I was impressed she was quiet, but when I went back to get her after the meeting, she'd gotten out!  It was one of the soft crates, so I guess from now on I'll have to put her in the hard crate.  She gets out of the ex pen now, and when I left her in the hall she started chewing the moulding and the stair railings.  I'll be happy when the teething is over.)

As for Jonah, he was good as always.  The first course started with a really de-motivational jump sequence in a box setup.  I started him with a slingshot that gave him lots of motivation but he got going enough that he peeked at the teeter as he was coming around a 270.  A name call did the trick and his line was still pretty good.  I think it was a pretty good trade off--a lead out would have gotten a slightly tighter path, but I would have had no dog after spinning around in circles.

The next challenge was a serp: a jump to a tire to the weaves:


The first time I handled the whole thing with him on my left, but I didn't wait enough between 2 and 3 and I pushed him past the entry.  We tried it again and got it when I was more patient.  I also tried a front on the landing side of 2 and then I tried a blind between 1 and 2.  That was my favorite way to handle it.

Then our second course was much more challenging.  It had three threadles, the first two of which were right in a row.  We got those done the first time, but then the third tripped us up--he read it as a 180.  He got a lot of other tricky stuff though--hard weave entries, discriminations, etc.  The second time through I handled the first line of threadles differently (pushing to back side rather than staying on the take off side), and it worked significantly better.

Overall, it was a good lesson.  I'm looking forward to tomorrow when the puppy stays home, though :).

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