This is our last time at Pawsabilities for practice. I have one more appointment there with Dr. Powell, Gimme's chiropractor. Not sure how we'll connect up with him from then on. I'm going to see if I can get him connected up with Dorothy to possibly do a booth at nosework trials. Don't know if it'll be lucrative for him, but it's worth a try.
I started with our usual warm-up routine. Originally I did it six times and now am down to three. I suspect we'll have to go back to six for our first practice at the new location next week. On the other hand, we won't have a noisy-squeaky puppy class going on just over the divider, so we won't have to recapture her focus partway through class. BTW I have started using the sniff cue "explore" during our walks, so it'll be clear to her what it means.
"Center" with pivot video - We haven't done much of this, so you see Gimme doesn't actually do "center" the first couple of times. She moves out of heel, but then turns it into "around". This was the third repetition on the warm-up, so I don't think she really had her listening-ears engaged yet.
"Center" 2 video - What we did earlier didn't seem to stick in her mind, so I broke it down further. Clearly we need to do some more work with this - just the part about getting into position.
"Center" 3 video - Here we did some more. Getting her to stick with me and not turn it into "otto" is a challenge. It occurs to me watching this, I used to change direction of the pivot whenever she got out of position. I need to try it again.
The rest of our session was spent getting video clips for another skills entry at the Intermediate/Advanced level. Out of what I did I got 5 clips - 4 solid ones and 1 that would pass, but could be improved. It's the Cross in Front Alternating and I'm certain I can get a better version. Gimme was momentarily distracted by the puppy class - it's a subtle pause, but I'd rather redo it than risk losing points.
Since I'm so aware of the hand bumps after losing 3 points on our novice skills test, I see Gimme bumps my hands a LOT. I really haven't been aware of it, so it's somewhat of a surprise to see how often it happens. The easy solution is to have my hands out of sniffing range, but I have to think of how I want to do it. I know Julie does everything with the hand nearest the dog on her hip, but I don't like how it looks. I'm going to ask on the MDSA list for suggestions. If I don't get anything I like I may do the hand on hip just to get through this, but I won't like it.
On the way home we stopped at Freedom for Gimme's manicure. She's really okay with Janice doing it. So, after this week (no nosework class), I'm going switch to doing nails between nosework classes. We go to the first class and Janice comes to the second class. There's 15 minute break between classes, so as long as I have her peanut butter GoToobs ready ahead, it should be easy to squeeze it in.
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