What we do when the weather SUCKS!!!

We rent a place a long way away! Well, actually, it is only about 45 minutes away on New Years morning, when hardly anyone else is out on the roads. This place is at least an hour when it is a normal traffic day. Sucks, driving in traffic sucks. I could drive an hour in the country and not complain. In traffic, I get grumpy! Well, New Years day I wasn't grumpy! :D
So, I drove even farther! I drove to get Jones (only about five minutes from my house, but that is five minutes FARTHER than the facility, so it adds a total of 20 minutes if you count the time to return him!), then drove up to this new place. It was AWESOME!!! Warm, nice equipment, good company with Shona and Rankin and I also brought Spur, so he and Jones had a blast!!!
Trained Jones with the carpet on his DW. Silvia now says that we need to try to break his habit those major adjustments doing his funky 1 1/2 hit downs. They are not deep enough and if he would just run normally with two hits, he would be perfectly in. Same thing for Spur, only with Spur if he would only take out one hit and run normally he would be perfectly in. With Spur we just let it go. Not sure if she just didn't know how to help him back then? I asked if I have been TOO picky with these two dogs, both are showing great understanding, but working TOO hard to hit the contact. She just said......"Maybe". This carpet thing is new. It isn't even on her DVD. Basically, the idea is to hide the contact and try to get the dog to just run and stop making adjustments. It sort of worked with Jones. During the session I was pretty excited because he had nice, deep hits he hasn't had in ages. But, upon video review I saw he added a hit. But, at least he isn't making those strange adjustments, so we are going to continue and keep at it with the carpet. SO wish I could train more often, damn it. HATING THIS SNOW!!!

We now have another blizzard and so with all the snow there is NO hope of having my dog walk here at home out for months. :(

 

I think with Spur using the hit-it boards had something to do with his adding a hit. And now he is so patterned to that pattern it is hard to change. He only does his 2, 3, 2 pattern on my rubber DW. I have never seen that anywhere else, he always does 2, 3, 3. Jones is now doing 2, 3, 2 or 2, 2, 3. That adds an extra .2 seconds. Still, faster than a stop, so we will take it. No question he fully understands his job, which is nice, so it should only get better and better, but we don't want what happened with Spur to happen with Jones. We want to start getting him patterned to 2, 2, 2. If we can train on a rubber DW indoors with this carpet we might start to see that, but these slippery indoor DW's don't help. He just can't get enough grip to get momentum. Maybe the carpet will help, but he isn't soaring the first apex as much.

One more video, while I am at it. Colby, playing with her Special Ball! It is nearly as old as she is and I hope it outlives her because I can't find one JUST like it. I do have one like it, but to HER it isn't "it". I only let her play with it, with the occasional steal from Spur. Then I take it away for the next time. 



Is she dreaming of playing with her ball?