Why all this??

Well I needed a place to track my training with the youngest of the crew. It's a place to brag and place my thoughts. She's almost two years old now and is proving to be everything that I hoped for. She's really rockin' in Rally-O, both APDT and AKC. We took a look at where she's at in agility this fall and wow! She's rockin' already. We still need to fix the A-Frame contact, but it's coming along. Same with the poles. Obedience is going to be our newest adventure. We'll see where we're at this sunday.

Yesterday was our training session with Maragret. I always look forward to my sessions with her. This week though was tough. I had to bring Charlie out to leave with his new foster family. I am still a bit unsure on how he's going to be with him. The guys is used to being physically corrective on dogs and that's not going to be good with him. So needless to say I was a bit distracted during my lesson. I know it's not fair to Kayla and not good for us b/c we're showing this weekend. Maragret and I got to talking about about what I was doing in agility with Bailey. She noticed that I was doing a not of no-reward markers. I was doing what Dana had suggested for teaching. I could try to cut back or eliminate it from my training, but I want to mark the fact that he can't skip the poles just because he wants to go. I will try it out the next session that I do. I think that I should eliminate it from my contact behavior all together.

On a different note, I need to work on my figure 8 exercise. I haven't paid enough attention to the details like I should have. I'll have to do what margaret said and set up hidden food in the room before bringing Kay in. I should get a good guage of if she'll hang with me with verbal encouragement. I have no doubt that she will. She loves to work.