Sunday, March 7, 2010

Adventures

I've recovered from the biting thing now. But I sure was distressed over that last night!

Now we're on to barking and adventures. Blaze's behavior vet would like us to drive back over (..."only" 4 hours) or send some video clips. Video it is. I've had an amusing time with that, but ultimately the barking is a combination of his behavior problems/brain injury and poor management. There's a limit to where the crates can be and how my schedule is and how many dogs I can be walking at once. And how much barking I can take! So I'm not sure that this'll make much of a difference for us.

The snow is slowly melting. Half of the property is without any, and the other half still has 4+" covering it. We visited the local bike path (still unplowed!) yesterday in the quest for "Griffin to be working in public Every. Single.Day. In Preparation for ClickerExpo in two weeks". Today we're going to stop at a big state parkish place on the way to a lesson.

A very clever parent has me come out about every month for a few hours to help her 4-H kids prepare. I wish my parents had done something like this for me!

Today we'll be doing lots of stay and heel work (...that's where the points mostly lie in SubNovice..!), a few agility foundation skills, and learning all about showmanship. My novice students tend to get more of an education in showmanship so they go to fair with one thing they're really well in, and by the second year, hopefully they're ready to do quite well in Obedience. We'll see. I've really modified (yet again) my 4-H curriculum this year. And as I always tell Karin and Megan... we need to play to win! (...or at least do really well with strong behaviors and great responses and knowing what we're doing!).

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