Advanced Handling/Foundation

Tonight Annie and I started an advanced handling class with Elizabeth Armstrong.

First we worked on having the dog jump "into you", in efforts to teach collection. Annie does this pretty well.

Then we did a course that was laid out already and found some issues.

Ideas:V start: When there are 3 jumps in a row and you only want your dog to do 2 -set them on a V start -they will not see the 3rd jump, as they arc around back to you.

Line: Look at quickest vs easiest. In this case there were 2 jumps 180 to each other then a tunnel back to the left of the landing side of jump 1. You could wrap your dog to the left around jump 2 (quickest) vs post turn around jump 2. I tended to want to handle it as a post turn but in reality it was easier to do a wrap.

270: Annie needs work on these -she doesn't want to go deep enough in the pocket to do these well. I need to offer her support through them. Perhaps try a go on so she keeps deep, keep my arm stretched out firmly.

DIVAS Class

Katie and Diva did the foundations.

They worked on restrained recall. Elizabeth held the dog...Katie walked away, and then called her to hand.

Loose leash walking

Touch: Teach them to touch a target.

Boxwork: Feet on the box: Showed us how to shape a behavior. Only work for a few minutes at a time. If the dog is "not getting" it it is OK to encourage (not lure) by putting the dog in a position that will encourage the behavior you're looking for eg in a corner so harder to get away from the box.

Katie and Diva did great - it helped they already had touched on everything.