Busy Busy Busy

Well lets see its been a while since I have had a chance to post. What with agility training, obedience training and now herding training to fit in I just don't know where to start.

Agility first.

Lets see her progress with her weaving has been out of this world. Tonight she was comfortably and with a high degree of reliability nailing 12 club base plated weavers as well as doing 12 stick in the ground weavers with both left and right side entries. I am so pleased with her progress and even Ness trying to get in the way tonight didn't phase her one little bit. She was funny as I was standing around at a fair distance to the weavers and thought I would see what she would do - well she ran under the jump but continued on and nailed the weavers driving hard right through to the end. Very pleased. She did a bit of work on a low scramble and also the end of the dogwalk but I do need to actually do more concentrated effort then just mucking around mostly with Ness at the same time. Her jump grid work when we have done it has been good. She seems to read her jumps well and adjusts her stride a lot better than Ness does.

She will also now go through a chute tunnel and we have been doing some work on the tyre. She will sequence a tunnel and the table together but I would like a down on the table so will need to work on that. Jumping as part of a sequence is still a work in progress as she tends to want to turn and spin back at me or run past the jump.

Obedience.

Hmmm well she can work very nicely. She is quite happy doing the novice exercises and can do them well apart from her issue with people. She is technically very precise and an absolute joy. She has a lovely recall, good retrieve, nice COP drop. Need to do some more work on duration heelwork and also positions and turns.

Now to the lastest activity - Herding!!!!

We trekked down to Meadows to attend a herding clinic run by Cass Robertson as a part of a Dogs SA herding session.

Kenzie (and Ness) had an absolute ball. Any way Kenzie's first shot she wasn't sure what to do. I had to grab the sheep and run backwards with them and play with the sheep. Man I got a good fitness work out running backwards with a sheep uphill. Towards the end of the turn she started switching on though so I figured I would stay around until they did the second turns after lunch.

The video of her first turn in the pen is posted below:



On her second turn, whenever she looked like switching off all I had to do was take a couple of steps towards the sheep and she would circle behind them. So much less having to play with the sheep.

I have no clue what I am suppose to be doing which probably doesn't help anything however she was doing really well at bringing the sheep to me.

The trainer thought if she did that she would quite happily pass an instinct test and thought she definitely had a lot of potential and it was worth putting the time and money into her if I wanted to go down that path.

So now I am trying to make a decision about entering the instinct test Saturday week. Think I will probably enter and see what happens. We would have passed the first time so I would assume she should be ok now but guess time will tell.