Morgan's Training

Morgan and I trained on Monday for obedience and freestyle and today for agility.

Our Monday session was rather abbreviated because I got up late and had to go into the office. We did some set ups and first steps with attention, fronts, cheese ball game to a front and some jump training. I'm trying to train Morgan not to take off too early. I probably need to put down some cavelletti poles to help with that. For freestyle we just went over a couple of things -- going around me, leaps, backing through my legs and both of us backing up and coming through my legs from behind (her favorite thing). She is really responsive to the food but not as crazy as she has been. I've been using the prong collar on her and it has reduced a lot of pulling and barrelling around.

In agility this morning, I was encouraged. We did the drill on the teeter and she did not really try to leap over the contact areas but made a couple of big steps. I added in an 'easy' and she slowed enough to get to the table w/o leaping. She did that a few times on both sides and I was happy. She didn't do as well with the weave poles today because we added in a couple that were not staggered. I think it is going a little too fast for her so we will back up a bit and start to bring the first six closer together. Gotta order those strips to practice in our own back yard.

What I am most encouraged about is that she did a fabulous job on the jump sequence. We started with the last obstacle, the tunnel, did it a few times and I went back to the first jump. We did jump, jump tunnel. GREAT. Then, jump, jump, tunnel jump. Finally we added another jump that almost closed the circle. She did GREAT. What was really very encouraging was that she didn't try to run off but once, to see a neighboring dog, I gave her a nick with the e-collar and it took a couple of seconds and then she came running back to me and went right back to work. Yippee!

I've still got to do those lesson plans but Ms. M is doing great. I'm very happy with her.