Griffin at CD Prep Class

We had our first night of class. The instructor is very experienced with competition obedience and obviously loved to teach.

Griffin and I were bad students, we had missed our exit and arrived 15 minutes late. Not a good start!

We did some heeling, the exercises mostly had a lot of luring to prevent the dog from making errors. I'll be practicing my treat transport (from _Agility Right From the Start_) so that we can get through these exercises better.

The class does two sets of stays every week. He did well with the distraction elements and surprisingly well with the duration (I was going back to feed often). He did roll on the down right before I returned. It was cute and horrible at the same time.

For the recall, we worked on dog attention before being called, some of the variations were treats tossed to the dog, away from the dog, and the handler creeping away. This was really hard for both of us.... the tossing of treats without a solid marker started in a bad habit of eyeing the treat hand. I'll have to establish a good verbal marker before next week so this doesn't get as messy...the one I was trying to use didn't work very well.

We did a set of stay challenges, leash pulling and dropped treats. Both are things we've done before and Griffin was very cute performing well. We'll have to re-visit the treat dropping exercise.... I think it was different with me sitting on the floor rather than standing like usual. I'm always conflicted on the leash pulling exercise...I want my dog responsive to slight leash pressure for our walking, but it's a good challenge.

Our first goal for next week will be to be on time.... our second goal is increased focus. He wasn't horrible, but there was more external interest than I had expected. If we can get there a bit early we'll be better prepared and settled and hopefully can work in more toy play than we did tonight.

Earlier in the day, at training group, we did stand for exams (more prance than I'd like...with NO ONE else nearby), CGC style greetings (he was playing helper dog and was PERFECT!), and restrained recalls to front (perfect).

Other things I noted: His kick back stand has gotten a bit sloppy. His relaxed down needs to be on cue.