December already! Wow.

How is the coming week shaping up for everyone?

I have agility class on Wed which starts a new session. I will probably not be re-enrolling Casey for the winter since he is at times a bit stiff from the cold.

I have a rental on Saturday.

Last night at the rental we did an advanced rally course (Bea Moore) that included a few advanced exercises that was truly fun - Towhee is starting to learn the Moving Stand and Return to Heel, Casey & Faelan got to practice it I think I am going to do more rally set ups as I work on heeling, fronts, finishes etc - it is amazing to me how much fun it is and how much the exercises remind me of the doodles I practiced with my King & Rowdy.

Brady will continue his puppy learning although I have not been to his classes - I find them incredibly boring and slow moving so can only imagine how Brady feels about them so we are sticking to private and on-line classes.

Here is a pic of the course we were working last night. The dogs were all thrown by the 36s Slow from Halt, 27s (Down and Stop) seemed problematic for all the dogs and 207s (Stand While Heeling) was a great addition to Rally I think!

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Golden moments shared with
Casey, Faelan, Towhee & Brady too !

and forever in my heart, my golden Bridge boys
Rowdy & King

I'm hoping that the next two Monday training sessions go as well as last weeks with sits and downs then I will be forced to relax a bit because of upcoming surgery. Nugget has really been making improvements and cleaning up some of his flawed exercises. Went to watch a trial yesterday and ran into several people who I used to compete with it truly was fun as I had forgotten just how much fun it can be and of course the disappointment when somebody dog NQ but that's part of it and they ALL do it occasionally. Going to work on outside turns and fronts and swing finish also heard of a new training place that I want to check out


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We are going to work on flat and high jump retrieves. Drop on recalls and straight recalls with tug toy thrown between legs some of the time. I will throw in at least one BJ several times this week.
We will work some on heeling and figure 8s. I'm going to keep Jonah from getting too sloppy on heeling but we will be seeing a Schutzund handler on Jan 5 for Jonah's heeling. The Schutzund instructor knows the problems I'm having and is going to help us solve them. I have confidence that Jonah is going to be an unbelievable dog when we solve his attitude and focus problems.

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Be Happy With What You Have!

I'm training two guys this week...

Jacks - he's especially getting a stay workout this week. I want to get jumps done every other day. Drops. And then somehow we need to get go-outs and signals in there as well. >._O<

Bertie - He can do sits in front of me now (what we trained yesterday). Now working on getting him to sit next to me. And he does his sits/downs/paws with Jacks. And retrieves and walking next to me with attention while Jacks is doing stays.

Little Bertram is very smart, despite his misguided ideas of fun. o_O I have a step next to my bed for the dogs to use. And then I have a chest next to that where I put coats or things for the next day. He has climbed up on my bed just to hop onto the chest and JUMP off. o_O And then goes around to do it again. Like he ENJOYED jumping off it. It's a low chest, but there's no way he should be jumping around like that at HIS AGE. o_O

When we were kids we played this game where we would run down our front hill and time jumps so we landed on top of the picnic table at the foot of the hill. We'd try to land on our feet and keep running across the picnic table to jump off the other end. Or we would jump off the top of the picnic table.

I have no clue now why our parents LET US DO THAT. I can only assume they were caught watching in horrified shock. As I can fully understand that. o_O

<I'm now moving the chest>

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Always loved, never forgotten, all our previous boys -

I did beginner rally today for the first time , I d never seen it or knew anything about what you did in it but there are sighs and you heel according to the sigh directions it was kinda fun and much easier than obedience as you allowed to talk to the dog who knew? They said I did really well but the others in this class didn't know Nugget has been training heeling and is pretty good for 7 mos. we went tonight to our regular obedience class and he got tired but still did nicely although one of three finishes on the recalls was lousy the rest was pretty good and he watched well and gave me nice tight abouts and a clean figure 8 . But I must say he did take a step on the stand for exam totally my fault as I didn't check him and left him a little off balance dummy me.


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Last night I had some fun with Brady. One of my assignments for Agility-U is starting the Rear Cross on the flat. Beginning steps? Put the pup in a sit stay and walk behind pup rewarding the turn as you cross behind him to the other side. We did not get that far LOL but we did get to my being level with his hip on the same side I started on - not bad for a pup pup.

I did not get much other training done although I had the day off. I went for my emission test and failed. That darned fuel tank sensor that the dealership said my Xterra had too many miles on to be eligible for the recall. So between the mileage (145,000), the cost of upcoming repairs and the suspicion that there was something going wrong with my tranny (metallic whirling noise right after shifting) and the thought that something else was going haywire due to the old vehicle smell /acrid smell in the cabin, I decided to trade the truck in. So 2 hours to fail emissions, 2 hours to buy a new Xterra and then 2 hours waiting for the dealership to do their prep thing I unloaded the old Xterra (crates, water, buckets, training equipment, work out bags, training bags, cleaning supplies, bungees, various lotions(sun, poison ivy block, bug spray etc), blankets and various other stuff. Loaded the new Xterra in a haphazard manner to get back home since Brady had now been in his crate almost 7 hours. Then re loaded the new Xterra neatly and in the same way the old one had been loaded since that worked. Anyway, by that time I just ate and lunch around 8pm and just crashed after training Brady, so the older dogs did not have training.

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Golden moments shared with
Casey, Faelan, Towhee & Brady too !

and forever in my heart, my golden Bridge boys
Rowdy & King

For us this week it's teeter and weave, teeter and weave, and some contact work. I've been super busy, so we haven't done much in the way of homework, but we do get a lot done at class. I still need to build at least a plank to practice contacts on and some 2x2 weaves.

Seeing the dogs at the Thanksgiving cluster made me feel a bit more motivated about actually getting him to the point that he could run a course accurately (and, more importantly to get me to a point where I can handle him with clarity and without falling over my own feet).

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Bertie thinks that "sits" are magical.

When I came home from work, my mom told me that the breeder must have done some training with the puppies because he already knows how to sit for treats.

I chuckled and reminded her I've had a couple days to teach him his sits. Both dogs are supposed to do informal sits or SOMETHING before they get treats. All our dogs learn sits first, even before they learn "shake". Which I'm working on.

His downs are good enough now that I can now do the down signal with the treat between my first three fingers. And he's now semi walking in a straight line for our going up and down the hallway. I mainly encouraging him to walk at a nice trot next to me - no commands, and every time he looks up for 1-2 steps I'm giving him a treat. Any sits I do (seperate from the walking thing - mainly just 1 step sit X 3), I'm trying to get him as straight as possible.

And Jacks got to do stays, drops, heeling, and retrieves. And then he got a little too wild and we stopped there. I'm so proud of him for holding his stays. I am going back and rewarding him frequently, but I know it's a lot of temptation holding that stay and knowing that little brother's getting bread.

Probably the nicest thing too is Bertie loves being groomed. This I definitely complimented the breeders a few times now, because I know the puppies in this litter got baths practically every day. I'm teaching him "steady" (standing up from a sit) so I can brush his sides and rear and really it's like he already knows all this. >.<

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Always loved, never forgotten, all our previous boys -

Well now that finals are over, I can actually read and post on GRF!

We are back in Tulsa for four more weeks. Unfortunately, this means that I miss out on class and privates, but I have plenty to work on while I'm home. I took the kids to a friend's house today to play agility because she has a nice agility field. Layla absolutely loved the jumpers course set up. We ran it with all blinds. She reads blind crosses incredibly well and just picks up speed when I use them. Also worked contacts and she had nearly 85% nice hits. Only missed the dw twice. Missed the aframe a handful of times if I wasn't driving ahead of her. We're re-training contacts and it's both lots of fun and lots of work.

Jade is sending to jump uprights really well. He pops out of tunnels like a bullet. I am so proud of him. He has so much focus for his age, especially with other fast, drivey dogs running in the field.

I need to get back to some field training basics with Jade. I also need to keep working obedience with him. I want to start teaching more open and utility exercises. I have plans to enter the Jademan in his first rally competition in January, so I need location work for that. We are also doing as much as we can with handling on the flat using Linda Mecklenberg's book. Jade starts his running contacts class in a couple of weeks as well. He's a busy puppy!!

Layla and I have a three-day agility trial this weekend. I'm very excited and have good feelings about this weekend. She just keeps getting better and faster for me the more I am figuring out how to be the best teammate I can for her.

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I just had a quick session with Ms Towhee (Faelan and Brady are on the field training bus for awhile yet) and I taped the session and slowed the playback down to 25%.

Wow: I caught myself stepping into my Towhee on a halt; bad handler, good Towhee. On one of my about turns my left leg went wide and was not kept under my hip - no wonder my poor girlie sometimes goes wide on her abouts; bad handler!!

I worked heeling, doodling, some front, finishes and downs. Just to check things out, I zoomed in on Ms Towhee while on a down (granted she is in some rough stuff on the driveway and on damp pavement from melted snow) but she is showing some stress, unease (lip licking) on my return as I walk around her to return to heel position (she is fine as I leave, wait and return). So I will be adding more returns to our training - maybe the same way Brady is currently learning about my walking behind him for rear cross work. She also started daydreaming on a longish slow so more work on that too.

On the plus side; Ms Towhee reads the about turns so well now that her ears literally start flying as she powers around me to maintain position, her normal to slow transitions look pretty good, she really is starting to heel nicely and her tail never stops Her downs from heel position are straightening out nicely.

Me: more shadow handling in parking lots with lines <sigh>

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Golden moments shared with
Casey, Faelan, Towhee & Brady too !

and forever in my heart, my golden Bridge boys
Rowdy & King