10 months 11 days
2011/12/03
Syn had a her first Open obedience class this afternoon. I was worried that she wouldn't be able to keep up with the class - well, worried isn't the right word, since I would work her at her own level no matter what, but I wouldn't want to hold the class up waiting for her to do something (or more likely, lower the jumps or otherwise take more time to take our turns). I thought I might have to drop out. She IS only 10 months old, with a puppy's enthusiasm and attention span.
First things first. We started with heeling. Her heeling isn't perfect. I need to concentrate on keeping her eyes on me - when her eyes wander off, she gets wider and wider as we go along. And, since we were doing conformation in the same building 2 weeks ago, she's not sitting automatically when I stop. On the other hand, she was the only one off leash and the only one not getting corrections. Some were (sigh) on pinch collars. Syn was trucking along cheerfully doing a grand job with a big grin on her face - in between gazing around like a hick in the big city. When we did figure 8s, I discovered that we need to work more on speeding up when she's on the outside, but her sidestepping inside turns were a thing of beauty.
Then we did stays while one by one we worked retrieve over the high jump. Her stays are not excellent yet. She would like to assume that I wasn't talking to her when I said "Stay" and instead meant for her to come right along with me. BUT when I asked her for a down and stay, this is what she gave me:
Yep, that's a Relax. 10 months old and she's offering me a Relax. In public. And stayed that way for 2 minutes with me 20 feet away. Wow! She couldn't hold it while I walked around her, but all she did was roll into a normal down position (like the dog on the left in the photo).
I thought I'd try a 3-board broad jump just once to see how much work I'd have to do on it - not much, apparently. I treated it like an agility obstacle. I put her back about 15 feet from it, "led out" to it, and turned as I would in agility to send her over it. She soared. And then ran back to me all excited - "I did it! Did you see me? I jumped right over it! Did you see? Did you see?" And twice more.
On to the retrieve over the high jump. We worked with a jump about 16 inches high. She was thrilled to do this too, and I spent some time tossing the dumbbell off to one side or the other so she had to curve her path to be sure to go over the jump.
Finally, the drop on recall. No problem, she's been doing that for 7 months. And that was our class. She was a long way from "keeping up" with the class. The other way around, really. She needs work on duration, on distance, and a bit on distraction, but she's got difficulty cased. She needs to practise these things until she's doing them because she knows how to do them, not because I'm giving her extra body language cues to help her understand what I want. But she's got the exercises cased. She knows how to do this. Heck, she's in Level 3 now, she can do ANYTHING!
First things first. We started with heeling. Her heeling isn't perfect. I need to concentrate on keeping her eyes on me - when her eyes wander off, she gets wider and wider as we go along. And, since we were doing conformation in the same building 2 weeks ago, she's not sitting automatically when I stop. On the other hand, she was the only one off leash and the only one not getting corrections. Some were (sigh) on pinch collars. Syn was trucking along cheerfully doing a grand job with a big grin on her face - in between gazing around like a hick in the big city. When we did figure 8s, I discovered that we need to work more on speeding up when she's on the outside, but her sidestepping inside turns were a thing of beauty.
Then we did stays while one by one we worked retrieve over the high jump. Her stays are not excellent yet. She would like to assume that I wasn't talking to her when I said "Stay" and instead meant for her to come right along with me. BUT when I asked her for a down and stay, this is what she gave me:
Yep, that's a Relax. 10 months old and she's offering me a Relax. In public. And stayed that way for 2 minutes with me 20 feet away. Wow! She couldn't hold it while I walked around her, but all she did was roll into a normal down position (like the dog on the left in the photo).
I thought I'd try a 3-board broad jump just once to see how much work I'd have to do on it - not much, apparently. I treated it like an agility obstacle. I put her back about 15 feet from it, "led out" to it, and turned as I would in agility to send her over it. She soared. And then ran back to me all excited - "I did it! Did you see me? I jumped right over it! Did you see? Did you see?" And twice more.
On to the retrieve over the high jump. We worked with a jump about 16 inches high. She was thrilled to do this too, and I spent some time tossing the dumbbell off to one side or the other so she had to curve her path to be sure to go over the jump.
Finally, the drop on recall. No problem, she's been doing that for 7 months. And that was our class. She was a long way from "keeping up" with the class. The other way around, really. She needs work on duration, on distance, and a bit on distraction, but she's got difficulty cased. She needs to practise these things until she's doing them because she knows how to do them, not because I'm giving her extra body language cues to help her understand what I want. But she's got the exercises cased. She knows how to do this. Heck, she's in Level 3 now, she can do ANYTHING!