Obedience and Agility Pieces

After last night at obedience class, I have a list of skills we are lacking in, but that also made me pull out the list of all the obedience skills we need to work on and we ran through some of those this afternoon.

- Go Outs: Still at using the foot target stage. I'll need to work on getting speed up. If he runs, he does well, understandably, and if he's moving slower, he's less likely to make it. The sit part is beautiful. Today we did a number of reps and then hid the foot target under a mat. He wanted to scratch rather than sit on it, but the second time was great and we probably could have taken it away. He went out about 30'!

- Retrieve: We did a few on the flat. Beautiful pick ups. Nice movement back. Sit was slightly off.

- Directed Retrieve: We probably haven't work on this since late last winter. So on rep 2, we went to one 15' to my right and one 15' to my left, dog facing me, and I sent him. We changed the angle ( objects more behind me) and then I was in heel and sent him. We should do this with foot targets rather than retrieve objects for a while to get more proficiency.

- Stand: We tried to get a better hop and stick in place, clicking when his front feet hit the ground. And theoretically extending the time. Handler still other than re-sets. And hopefully my motion can be added back in

- Exam part...: Very good. He looked completely still for almost all the repetitions. The 2-3 times he moved, it was towards me/away from the person.


And then we went and worked on some agility skills. He's adorable. He is surprisingly proficient on so many skills, I just don't always remember how much help or not he needs. It's interesting to see where he is fluent and where he isn't, he wasn't able to perform a few skills at a distance, but another whole set of cues he was able to respond to with a completely new handler who hadn't ever done agility. Given the right cues, he performed how he should. It's fun that he is so comfortable working with other people.