Meaggi did just as well on her second session as on her first. I think she was more excited and thus, a bit less focused, but overall she did nicely and found all the food. She thinks this is a whole bunch of fun. Meaggi tends to gravitate to where I am standing and searches the boxes nearest to me, so that is useful information.
I notice she has a hard time knowing when to stop searching, since she really can't see me putting the boxes away and so keeps looking for them. Soon I will start putting her in a little harness, so that will become the cue of when to search and when she is done. I also see that if a box has a closed lid, it takes her a lot more effort to get into it, since she can't really see how to open the flap. Of course, that only slows her down, doesn't stop her. She is certainly persistent. After we are done, I do find her more settled for a few hours.
Interesting and possibly unrelated, last time for the first time in over a year, I noticed that evening she actually wanted to drink water. I didn't see that last night, but its possible she went to the bowl outside. Getting her to take in enough fluids is a struggle since she doesn't drink water anymore. I have to add water to her meals and I float treats in the water or add flavors to it to get her to drink up. Once she gets started she does well, just tends to sniff water and then walk away. Now that its summer, I'm going to make her up some tuna-water ice cubes.
Gimme has been meeting with Grafton for nosework field trips and is doing well. There have been some really hard hides for her to deal with and she's being challenged with drifting or pooling odor and having a hard time following it back to source. I just let her work through it. Another challenge that is an issue is that the hides aren't out for very long before she is searching for them, so there hasn't been time for the odor to spread out. This weekend we have a match, so it'll be interesting to watch the video's of that afterward and see how it compares to the last match.
Gimme and Grafton also went out to the fort to run and play on Saturday and had a great time. On Sunday we walked on leash around Capitol Lake. Gimme does well on that, but Grafton doesn't quite understand that you can't wrestle-play with your girlfriend while you are both on leash. So they get their leashes tangled a lot. Silly kids.
Gimme and I are still working on all the behaviors we'd been working on before. She is so smart that most things are going really well. We did a session on the 2x2 weave poles for the first time in many months. Our last session hit a snag and I couldn't get us past it. So I just put it away until now. Suddenly she pops right past that as if it was never there.
That is often how it works with her. Any behavior that was presenting a problem or stump, if I leave it alone for awhile, when I come back to it, suddenly its as if the stump was never there.
Our schedule for the last four weeks of Ursula's classes is 2 days a week of the Targeting & Shaping class. Ursula has plans to add a CGC class to her offerings and I hope she gets it ready to go in the next month. If she does, I'll sign us up for another ten weeks, otherwise we'll have to wait until next year. Once the holiday season starts (late October) I really don't have the ability to get to classes with any regularity and just getting to nosework every Wednesday will be enough of a struggle.
Cross your fingers on the match.
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