Cracker start to the New Year - Busy with Training

What better way to spend the first few days of 2010 but with a renewed enthusiasm to get out and do some training. I sat down and rewatched the Susan Salo jumping grids videos and got all excited to do some training.

Agility first -

Friday evening we headed up to Scotch for a bit of jump grid work. I put Kenzie through the straight-line equal-distance grid and the straight-line equal-distance grid with height. She had no issues with either of the grids and did them all very nicely.

Yesterday afternoon we headed out the front to the nature strip and tried a distance grid and a progressive grid.

The distance grid she really struggled with as I tried starting the jump at 14ft as was recommended for medium dogs. I ended up dropping back the final bar to the 10ft sheltie distance and built up from there. She really wasn't getting it though. We finished up with a simple 5,6,7 and 8 ft progressive grid which she had no hassle with.

Just before I took her back out the front for another session on the progressive grid and the distance grid. This time we started with the progressive grid - 5ft, 6ft, 7ft, 8ft. She nailed that easily so I went to 6ft, 7ft, 8ft, 9ft - again she nailed it so we went to 7ft, 8ft, 9ft, 10ft. First time she threw in an extra stride in the 10ft gap but we tried a second time and she offered the bounce jump. For the distance grid I started with 12ft between bar 3 and 4 and built out to 17ft. She had relatively few issues with finding the appropriate take off point and reading down the grid. I did also opt to attempt the grid as a lead out so she would focus ahead to bar 4 to work out what she needed.

Good sessions all round and some lovely stuff happening :).

Obedience -

Have had a mixed couple of days working on things like scent, gloves, doodling, retrieves, recalls, presents, open change of positions. Her scent work I think has finally hit a lightbulb moment - today she was happy working a pile of 4 unscented woods, 1 scented wood and in a line so she was making decisions to not return with an incorrect one not just finding the correct one out by accident. The flower pot idea really helped her clue into what I wanted. As for the rest most of it is pretty technically perfect - and I am hard to please. I would like some more speed into her recalls and retrieves but her presents and lovely.

All up her training seems to be coming together and I am expecting big things from her this year if we can get over her scardy people issues.