We met at Diane's house tonight for class. We did two exterior searches and one indoors. I honestly had no idea of what to expect from my little "expectant mother". I figure she is "due" any day now - caught her examining the floor of the closet this morning and she's getting more emotional by the moment. She's been very needy and has to be with me every moment. Usually she naps on the couch while I'm on the computer, but tonight she is right here with me.
Despite my concerns, she did really well. Her first search she was a bit less focused than normal, but still did great finding both hides in the exterior very quickly. One was in a garden hose caddy, tucked under the edge of the hose. The other was in a pen cap stuck into the ground and covered with bark dust.
The second search was in Diane's tiny garage - good thing she has a sports car or you couldn't get in or out of the car. A couple of the dogs found this space disturbing - it was really crowded and the lighting was very dark at one end. Gimme didn't have any problem with that. She found where the NW1 level hide had been, but had difficulty finding the inaccessible hide in a drawer, which was a hard one. She tried to tell me the lingering odor was it, but I didn't fall for it and so she persisted and found the real deal. We would not be faced with that kind of lingering odor at a trial - they won't even reuse a room on the next day.
The last search was around a fountain. Gimme just had me running around behind her and found those very quickly. I was sure glad to see that she does this well at nosework even in her "condition".
Last night in agility class - she was not very focused, so for her first run we just focused on teaching her to do the chute without curling toward me as she finishes it. We probably did the chute 25 times... Gimme thought that was very fun. We also did the weaves. She missed the entry, but when I put her in again she did them nicely.
For our second run, we did do the course until we found a spot that challenged us... It was a two jump straightaway with a big distance between them and in a place where she'd easily get ahead of me. She curled toward me and missed the second jump. I did it again and used a forward hand signal to send to the second jump. Then Blynn had me do it again using my hand to push out to the side. She said the problem was that she was collapsing in on my line and that I needed to push out to the side not thrust forward. It worked beautifully. I love APHS handling because its so intuitive to the dogs.
We've been doing a little bit of free-shaping of two new tricks for use in RallyFrEe. One is to send her out to run through an upright hoop - which took her all of three clicks to figure out. I wanted it to teach her to go out to the dogwalk up-ramp and have her mount the end, not the side, without me being there. Of course Gimme wanted to embellish it... so once we are done using it for its intended purpose I'll retool it using her idea -- which is, to back to it and through it... She's so clever.
I bought her a cute little stool for our other trick - which is to get on the stool with all four feet and spin around. She's happy to get on it, but not yet comfortable enough to offer turning around. If I'm right there moving around her she will to keep facing me. The stool is small - 8x11 top and ten inches high. Its not too small for her to do that, but enough that she's not yet completely comfortable. I think I'll use a milk crate to shape the intended behavior (with something to make the bottom comfortable on her feeties) and then will transfer it to the stool.
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