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Ok, so seeing as I'm rubbish at keeping a diary/scribbles of how training's gone, I thought maybe I could try and keep an up to date version on the blog.

So here goes.

Thank you to the people who emailed me suggestions. When I trained today, Scandal again did perfect running dog walk, from whereever on the dog walk I released her (including full ones). We also did some stop ones and they were great, really pleased with them as she's driving down into the position really nicely where ever I am.

So, to make the running ones a little harder, and adding in a distraction, I put her half way along the dogwalk, and had Ricky alongside, on the floor. Said 'go' and Scandal flew down and hit the contact very high up. So we went to the end of the down plank, but again she jumped. So, I gave her a 'time out' for 10 secs. I think the 3rd and 4th one she then got nicely, so I moved her back a bit along the dog walk. Jump. Jump. We worked on it for a while and I think we made some sort of progress. But Scandal got about 6 time outs, which for me is higher than I'd like, however the majority of these were at the top down plank, so I'm not bringing her any closer than that.

So... I think what is happening is when I train at home, there are no distractions, or distractions that Scandal is well used to and it doesn't bother her. But add anything else in and all of a sudden she does a completely different behaviour. So, we need to increase distractions at home, setting Scandal up with a much higher chance of her succeeding, ie from the top of the down plank, and then move her further back as her % of success increases.

So... plan will be for now to do stop dog walks at UKA shows, and KC shows. When I feel that the running dog walk will hold up in the ring, I will try it out first at UKA, and if it is ok, do it at KC. So we have got a lot to work on, but at least a plan of action to go with it :D

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