Back to Basics.

It rained. In March. In Minnesota.

So what did the boys and I do?

We trained, of course :)

With May not being too far away I'm trying to tread the fine line between the perfect amount of course work and the perfect amount of back-to-basic type stuff with both of the boys. (If you're confused by the significance of May that's when WT Tryouts are for Blade and I!).

Today was one of the back-to-basic days with both dogs.  Blade's accurate but I have a hard time getting him to run HARDER. So we are working on it every chance we get.

I also realized while working with Blade this afternoon that I need to reinforce actually listening to cues and not just following my body motion. We had a few spots of miss-communication which I wasn't expecting, but it was nice to work through it and take note especially getting geared up for tryouts. 

Happy Blade :)

Da Vipe on the other hand got to work on his criteria, specifically on his dogwalk. Some people know that we are taking a break from the whole running dogwalk thing until I establish a very black and white criteria with Viper. So, for right now I am asking for a solid 2o2o with speed. Since the majority of the time I am able to at least pace him I haven't worked very hard on him driving into his end position. So our focus was to start peeling away or lag. Surprise, surprise Da Vipe was a rockstar ;) video is below:

Running with da' momma peeling off. Awesome

Another rep of da' momma peeling away from him.

Total rockstar. I'm very happy with his speed getting on and moving across the dogwalk. With more confidence I am hoping that he will be more willing to omit some of the extra steps he's taking to get into his 2o2o position at the bottom. Right now I'm ok with what he is offering as I'm more focused on his STOPPING then just moving through the contact.

We tried a few where I lagged WITH a lure out in front of the dogwalk to keep Viper driving forward. The video is pretty self explanatory.

We have an AKC trial coming up in two weeks and even though I'd really like to get Viper out of Open Standard, I am more concerned with maintaining his 2o2o criteria in new places. We have another ring rental next week which I am going to try and remember to spend time proofing Viper's end behavior even more. 

Again, that is if I remember...

 I'm hoping to get some time in just focusing on handling next week. If there's enough time I'll settle for a little of both!  

So yeah, when it rains, we train!

And have totally fabulous training session maintaining contact criteria (finally)!