Today Amanda & I went out to Cowley for a mini seminar sponsored by SAWHDA & given by Obedience Judge Jeffery Lunder. There has been many changes to the Obedience rules this year & he explained them to us. This was followed by a wonderful turkey lucheon & then an Obedience Fun Match.
If you recall I have been struggling with Kort to get his ring stress in check. It has been a VERY slow process with not many advances. Today he did awesome however! We entered the ring & I asked him to sit, he sat. This was huge!!!!! I knew from the very start in trials if he didn't sit we were done, game over, he was already stressed & he would not work.
We ended up spending a couple of minutes talking about what exercises I was going to do however & he laid down, stress:(
I got him up & played around with him a bit before getting him back into heel position where he sat again, yippee :)
For the heeling pattern I just did an L with no sits, but changes in pace. He was doing awesome, focused, head up, then we did an about turn followed by a fast. Kort zoomed ahead, cut me off & charged right, I was like , what the heck! I tried it again with the same result, Amanda then & told me it was the wall plus the heat vents on the floor, right, I had forgotten he is worried about those :) We moved further away from the wall & he was better, he ended his last line of heeling with wonderful focus!!!! I was thrilled!! It has taken about 6 months just to get this point. Basically all I have been doing at matches is entering the ring, asking for a sit, then leaving the ring & rewarding. Even to get him to look at me in the ring before starting has been a real challenge.
I then got greedy & tried a retrieve on flat, he retrieved his dumbbell but dropped it instead of bringing it to me, that's new, stress. I tried a drop on recall, no drop, damn, stress again, my bad!
So that was that , I just pulled out his toy & was able to get him to play & then actually tug in the ring, oh joy!!!
My goal is to trial in 2013, so another whole year of training.
I am so excited that what we have been doing to build his confidence up is working!
Good Boy Korty ♥
3 comments:
Kort did really well Jo. I was impressed with his focus on you (apart from the scary grates...) He's coming along- and when you finally get there it will be all the more satisfying because of your hard work and patience!
It looks like it's going to be a long road for you both, but I hope it all works out for you.
Yeah Kort & Jolene!! Good luck with all of that. Sounds like you're on the right road.
Post a Comment