Good training

Morgan and I have had some good training sessions. We worked the Monday after our lesson at Tom's, we worked again at home on Tuesday, Thursday, and today.

Morgan has had some trouble with the 12ft. jump chute. She either runs around the first jump or she breaks her stay and takes all the jumps knocking several down on the way. I tried to fix the first problem by moving up closer (in front of the last jump). That worked fine until I moved behind the last jump. Same problem. Then I did a kind of reverse back chain where I stood in front of the second jump, then in front of the third jump, then in front of the fourth jump, and finally behind the fourth jump and it worked like a charm. I asked her to sit so I could send her in the opposite direction and before I could get halfway there, she had broken her stay. Now she was raring to go. So I worked on the stay problem by coming back and treating her for staying as I walked away and when I turned and faced her. I finally got two lines of 4 12ft jumps with a start-line stay AND all four jumps. We quit after that.

Interestingly, my low rep dog has turned into a high rep dog when it comes to jumping. She loves it.

We are working on doing the weave poles from both sides with a jump. She is having trouble with the off side weave entry. After about a gazillion reps (which she didn't seem to mind) she was doing the correct entry and the jump without hesitation.

We also worked on the jump, jump, box (running contact stuff). Today, she was doing it like a real champ. She acted as if she knew she was supposed to get four feet in the box. I think we will practice just the box tomorrow to reinforce that all four feet should go in there.

The last thing we worked on today was the threadle and serpentine just to see if I could still remember how to do them :-)

Tomorrow, no jumping --more weave poles, some more plank work, practice on front and rear crosses w/o equipment. Won't have much time between the conference and the bb game but we will get some time in before we have to go to our lesson on Sunday. I'm encouraged with her progress.