Rusty Morgan

I can't believe it has been 9 days since I last posted a blog. I guess it is a testament to how much I have been doing. Unfortunately, it has been raining a lot and I've been very busy. I spent three days writing and not leaving the house for much of anything last week. We did go obedience training one day but since I cannot remember what we did, I guess there were no ah ha moments for Morgan.

We missed training Saturday because I thought it was raining. I can never tell if it is raining unless it is pouring and I hear it in the vents and chimney. Anyway, Morgan and Merlin came in from pottying and they were both wet so I figured it must be drizzling. However, Tom said that it was dry at his house. Anyway, we went to train in his yard this morning--no rain but very overcast.

It was a hard day for Morgan. She didn't do well with the time off. We tried the teeter first and as soon as I started to run beside her, she decided to jump the yellow part. I went back to feeding her a cookie just before the hop. Did that for a couple of times. Then, I slowed down and gradually built up speed until she didn't try to hop the yellow any more.

Next we tried a jump sequence and she did that well. But then we decided to teach a rear cross. A really bad decision because neither Tom nor I really knows how to teach a rear cross. Morgan didn't get it. None of us did :-) We'll read up on it and do better next time. Should have tried the front cross because I'm really good at that one :-)

Finally, we tried the weave poles. Tom has the weave poles set up so that the first five poles are staggered about six inches apart and the sixth to the 12th poles are in a straight line. As long as the poles were six inches apart, Morgan did well going down the middle. At the first pole that was in a straight line, she popped out. We moved the target to right in front of the first straight pole and she got it but when I switched to work her on my right side, it took several tries before she got it again. After a couple of tries with no reward, Morgan still tried to convince Tom to give her treats when she didn't deserve it. She does a really pretty sit with excellent eye contact. Hussy. After she got the sixth pole correctly, we quit.

As I said, a very rough day for Morgan's training. I ordered the grommet strips from Max 200 and they shipped yesterday. I bought the stake thingys from Lowe's on Saturday and I charged up my drill to fix the travel plank on Monday. So as soon as it stops raining, we should be good to go in my backyard for weave poles, 2on2off, and jumps. The backyard has a LOT of ruts so I have to be careful when training that neither one of us steps in one and hurts herself. The plan for the spring is to get someone in to level my back yard and then plant some sod. I could use that second job right about now to pay for my dog training habits.

We're doing obedience tomorrow in the morning and planning Merlin's video entries for freestyle. Unfortunately, Morgan's dumbbell is in the same shipment as the grommet strips so we can't work on that yet in obedience.