Flying Poodles

Back to training…

Well, yes, I was feeling stale and tired yesterday but I hung around all day and just relaxed. I ate a ridiculous amount of food, most of it fruit. I ate three million cherry tomatoes, because my garden is producing three million cherry tomatoes every day right now and I really like cherry tomatoes. (Seriously, I picked and ate almost two quarts of cherry tomatoes. Yum.)

This morning I woke up feeling rather more energetic and my knees actually felt sort of okay.

So I took Dancer and myself down to class this morning with Dick Watson, who set up a nasty little course that Dancer did beautifully on, getting her contacts with enthusiasm–she loves cheese!–and getting her weave entries (which were tricky) with equal enthusiasm. It was fun, and we both needed a fun practice session.

I’ve been continuing with my five-minutes-daily practice sessions at the world’s smallest agility field (the front yard, 21′ x 40′, grass). Lately I’ve been working distance. I know it’s weird to work distance in such a small area, but… I’ve been working on the meaning of “out” and “that way”.

I set up two jumps, side-by-side, like this:

Teaching OUT and "that way!"

Then I stood where the toy is, with Dancer on the outside, next to me, holding her collar after taking the toy away from her. Swinging her off my hip, I swung my hand up and push the line, taking one step toward the nearest jump standard but holding my hand up like a traffic cop, saying OUT! firmly. Then, I threw the toy as she goes over the far jump, then raced to play with her.

Once she clearly understood to take the OUT jump from both directions, I did the same swing off my hip but kept my hand down and said HERE! to indicate the near jump.

When she understood both of those well, I went to the next step: I wanted a turn away from me.

As she approached the HERE! jump, I swung up the OTHER arm and said THAT WAY! (it should be “switch” but THAT WAY! is what comes out of my mouth, so I’m going with it). I completed the rotation, kept my arm up, and she followed the path I wanted very nicely over the OUT! jump. I then did another turn, dropped the shoulder and the arm, and pulled her back over the HERE! jump.

It’s a simple path but it does teach what I want, which is the OUT! and THAT WAY!

My goal for the next training session is to move further away from the jump pair.