Weave Poles

We started training weave poles again and Morgan is doing great. She was zooming throught those poles with lightening speed and then I had to move the poles together. She slowed considerably. As usualy with poor Morgan, I moved to much too fast but I have to hand it to her she was having fun and didn't quit on me. I finally made more subtle changes and she did great. We have a lot of things to work on before we can show so I should stop being so impatient :)

She usually does cookies in the hall with great enthusiasm but today she was distracted and can only think that it was becuase I set up the weave poles (in the same ring) before I started playing cookies in the hall. She WANTED to do those poles. LOL.

Where does time go?

I see that I haven't posted since OCTOBER!!! What an awful blogger I am. Here are some highlights of Morgan's training:
1) She would not perform her freestyle routine without food so we ended up pulling our act.
2) She managed to get a leg in Rally Advanced even though she had no attention and she left the ring on a 270 right.
3) We never got more chances to practice swimming and I never finished the forced fetch with her.
I have had such a rough time training this dog that I had just about given up. Then I remembered how much fun we had 2 summers ago doing the Sue Garrett Recallers' Class. So I signed up for a new class. That is the good news. The bad news is that I haven't really done anything with it because I have been so busy taking care of Caroline's dogs and fetching and hauling stuff from Caroline's house to her rehab site. She had a total ankle replacement. I've had a lot of other things to do as well so my time has definitely not been my own. It is not how I wanted to spend my break and I'm beginning to feel a little resentful about it. But there are still 9 days until Christmas and I have another 2 weeks after Christmas that I can catch up with my class.

Morgan has been doing well with her agility class. I have been better about practicing her 2o2o and she has enjoyed the class. I just bought some stick in the ground weave poles so we can practice them at home. Tomorrow, I get to pick up a bunch of agility equipment from my friend Diane who is off to a job in the middle east for three years.

Seems like a lot happened in 2 months, huh?

Freestyle demo and practice

I didn't report on our demo. Morgan was part of a freestyle demo that Peggy and I did for our club last Thursday night. I loaded myself down with cookies and off we went. At first we did our singles routine which was done to Flashdance. I JUST got the choreography for it done two days before so to say that we weren't ready for prime time was an understatement. However, Morgan didn't do terribly. I think she liked being the center of attention but it didn't keep her focused on me. The chicken helped.

During the pairs routine, she was just the tiniest bit better. At least she didn't start a fight with Matt like she did today in practice. Well, she got in his face and he didn't like it at all. There were parts of the routine she did really well and other parts that were bad. I felt encouraged because none of the moves was awful.

However, today, with no audience and no chicken, she was simply terrible. She wouldn't do any of the moves and those she did do she did slowly and without any enthusiasm. This dog is so very frustrating to me.

Freestlye practice

This morning we did our freestyle practice like I used to walk the excellent courses in agility. We started at the end. I told Peggy that Morgan wasn't getting the ending becuase we have spent most of the time doing the opening. I told her how I remembered the course in agility by walking the last five obstacles, then the last 10 and then the whole course. It worked great.

So today, we practiced the last section of our routine. Morgan was finally getting it. Yay!!!! She even seemed to be having some fun. On Wednesday, we have to practice our single's routine.

GCOC agility match/Poodle Club Match

I took Morgan to do the agility match because she isn't ready for an agility trial yet. I decided that I would do four obstacles and get the hell off the course if she stayed with me. I fed her cheese like a pez machine before I went into the ring and put her cheese away before we went in. I do believe that she really likes all the running and jumping in agility so she didn't seem to care that I didn't have food. She was brilliant. Took direction easily and changed her path when I asked, didn't knock one bar, and even did a rear cross which I kinda bobbled. :) I was very proud of my girl.

I judged obedience in the poodle club match today but I was determined to take Morgan through her paces in rally and obedience. I literally yanked her out of the motor home and 5 minutes later we were in the rally ring. I gave her cheese before we went in and I took a small piece in with me. She did fabulously. I am so pleased. Her heeling in Novice was absolutely gorgeous (I did have chees in the right hand that I transferred to the left when she did something particularly well. However, on the off lead heel,she didn't miss a step. Yay, yay, yay, yay!!! I think my girl is beginning to understand the game.

Freestye and Obedience

Today, Morgan did very well with her freestyle lesson in conjuction with Peggy Singletary. Our pairs routine may work out yet :) I also did a teeny bit of work on our individual. Peggy gave me some good ideas on the individual routine. I think we can have some fun with it.

Today, MOrgan's heeling was BANG ON! And I didn't feed her until her heeling pattern was finished. YAY!

Freestyle 9/26

The freestyle routine we are doing with Peggy is coming along. Today, she wanted to change our hand movements and get rid of the treats. I told her we had to do one thing at a time. I hope she doesn't change anything else in the routine because I am geting dizzy with all the changes and I may just quit. While I am getting frustrated with Peggy, Morgan is cooperating better and seems to be having fun with me which is FABULOUS.