Daves training

Ok I'm getting behind with the blog, this post is nearly a week late.

Imogen, Laura and myself went to Dave's last Tuesday, Garth drove, yay :D we had a lovely time and then went to Sandwich Bay afterwards which is a private beach which was lovely, then went and had Fish and Chips on the beach which was lovely too. Was nice for the dogs to have a good walk after training as I think it's good for them to be able to unwind.

Imogen was as usual brill, she picks things up so quickly, Honey was great, and even bounced a jump right at the end which is good as she'd had an hours training. We do an hour with each of them, but break it into half hours, so we all do a half hour, then all do another half hour, gives them all time to rest in between. Was pleased as it's the first time Scandal's had an hour, the other times shes had 45 mins, and she was still remotely up for it at the end which is much better than she has been before.

I absolutely loved this lesson and was probably one of my faves, got so much out of it and have been practicing the stuff this week and feel that we have made lots of progress but still lots to work on. Scandal's dogwalks was good she hit every one nicely, they only thing she did was on one of them she was expecting me to throw her toy afterwards so ran round a jump. Aframes were nice apart from the first one when she did the apex-contact, and didn't put a stride in, time out for 10 secs and she didn't do it again. The seesaws were the first seesaws she's done anywhere except mine, and she was lovely on them, did a fast one too. Not too worried about the speed of them as think will come eventually plus it looks slow on vid as she'd done about 50 mins work by that point so was flagging :)

So we did loads of work in collection after a turn rather than me just doing the turn and assuming Scandal's following, me cueing but not too early or too late as I tend to do one or t'other :) Scandal was great at collecting herself for a front cross but I was not great at collecting her afterwards. I'm sure she had sped up as at times I did feel like she was leaving me for dust and I was trailing. The one thing she was not good at was lots of cross behinds on a staggered line of jumps in a straightish line, she decelerates nicely but doesn't tend to shape into a turn after. We did some work on cross behinds after this and they were good, it's just the staggered line for us to work on. Actually I think looking at the vid we've got quite a lot to do in the way of working on her finding a line and powering off to it, she now (thankfully) can power down a straight line, but if she's ahead of me and I say 'right' and she has to power 5-10metres to the next jump she won't go full speed, I think it's coz she wants to be sure to get it right, she's being careful :)

Also did the most full height stuff she has ever done (not much!!) and she was so much better than I thought she would be, I don't think it's gonna be as much of an issue as I thought it'd be. She's still much more comfy on 22" but then we have still got 6 weeks or so before our first KC show.

Laura's Be is looking amazing and the difference in her in the or 5 lessons we've had with Dave... well looking at the first vid from back in October it's hard to believe it's the same dog as the stuff Dave has got her to do has so helped in sorting out her striding, learning how to jump, and powering to the jumps.

So all in all a good lesson, got another one end of next month just before Scandal's first KC show eeek!