January Gambling

We just did a short session today, but we worked on some good distance challenges.  Here was the setup:

I would send him to the tunnel, which he never has any trouble with, and then give him a command for the weaves as he was nearing the end of the tunnel.  The first time he came racing back to me and never saw the weaves, but I could stay a ways back and send him to the weaves individually.  After a couple tries he was racing directly to the weaves.  He didn't have any trouble with the entry.

Then, once he was conditioned to turning right and going to the weaves I practiced sending him straight ahead to the jump.  This was harder for him.  He really wanted to come towards me, and even started the weaves a couple times.  We eventually got it.

Next I put it together as tunnel-jump-weaves.  It was a tough entry if he jumped big over the jump.  I had to stay still while he went out and jumped, and let him find the entry before I started moving down the line, or he ran right past the entry.  He got it several times, though.  Good boy.

After that I went on to do some wrap practice.  I set a jump between two trees, with about 2 feet of clearance on each side of the jump.  Each time he wrapped tight enough to come back inside the tree, I would jackpot.  His success rate was a little lower than I would have liked, so I might need to find trees slightly farther apart.  Our last gamble was on the other side of the line.  I sent him to the jump, then out to the tunnel headed away from me, and then he finished fast through the weaves.  No problem.  He was great.

So, distance is definitely a skill we're still developing, but it's fun to set different things up and keep practicing.  The weather looks like it's still going to be warm enough to be outside (grr...I want winter!), so the upside is that we can do more agility.