Not all fun and games (or is it?)

It's Labour Day weekend and I've been off since Thursday night. I've had things to do, you know the usual, laundry, clean the bathroom (hummm.. still have to do that). Chad and have had two herding lessons, one today and one yesterday. Basically though, I've had a lot of time off this weekend to lie around read, watch the tennis and golf. The thought has occurred to me that I should post something on my blog. I wasn't really sure what to write about. I've been getting Gali ready for our first utility trial in October, he coming along really nicely. I think we may be peaking at the right time. So other than bragging about my fabulous Buhund, which I am happy to do, there is not much to say. Ribbon's heeling is suddenly coming together. Her understanding of head cues has come together and I am working on perfecting her figure 8. Signals and articles are coming along great; she is really enjoying those skills. While training random drops and figure 8 tonight I momentarily heard myself saying to classes this week, "Make sure you choose two things each week that aren't your favourites to train and put some time into those skills." Well, guess what I was doing? Heeling (favourite), Articles (another favourite) and random drop with food tossing (nothing more fun than watch your dog chase a piece of food across the floor and then drop). What wasn't I doing? Fronts (least favourite thing to teach) and Dumbbell (not high on my list either).

So before I left the training hall I did some doodling and worked on fronts reminding Ribbon where her focal point is for this skill (my face). She has a habit of planting her rear end quickly and then moving her front feet off to my left which makes her crooked. Sort of an unusual thing I think. By reminding her to watch she picks her head up higher and keeps her front feet still. Then I added some distance, we had some anticipation problems, but no big deal. One thing I really like about my new little girl is that she holds onto a concept really well. What I showed her to do only travelling a few feet easily transferred to a full length recall and she nailed 4 out of 5 fronts. Guess what?? My dog was reinforcing me for training a skill that I am not usually that motivated to train!! How cool is that? Next I got my chute out and worked on sharp off angle fronts allowing her to chase a piece of food to get her away from me. As she was coming back towards the chute, if she wasn't looking up I reminded her to "Watch" and cocked the knee closest to her to make her go around it and into the chute. Worked like a charm and again I think I got 4 out of 6 fronts perfect. I can't wait to train fronts tomorrow!!!!

Good girl Ribbie