"Out" Progress

My weekend has been largely consumed by work, but I had some time this morning to work with the dogs' agility skills again.   With the daylight fading out at 5 now (Gr.), I like to use available daylight for agility, and work on Obedience skills indoors.

Molly is progressing really well with the "Out".  Evidence...

Don't be jealous of my cool pants!

I couldn't resist and I did try to use our new command to run by a jump and send her to it.  Success!!  I shouldn't have done that until the skill was proofed really well, but I have no self control (Hey, just like my dog!)   This is really fun and Molly seems very addicted to working on it (probably because she is addicted to her Rip 'n Tug ball and will do anything for it.)  I am very proud of her.

As for Perri, she is doing good as well.  Today we focused on the "Decel Pull" exercise as seen at the end of this video.  I thought it would be a good skill to work on, my standing by a jump and instead of running towards it.  Perri actually did this with no trouble and that surprised me!  She is still struggling with her weave poles outdoors and I am discouraged by that.   This was one of her most solid agility skills.  I opened up the channel again and we worked only on a narrow channel today because there is no sense trying to tell Perri, "You understood this, what happened?!  Do it with the channel closed!"
I am going to blame the fact that she has largely only done weave poles inside of agility buildings (three different places now.) and inside of my garage.  Our backyard weave experiences have been almost nothing, and now there are leaves blowing everywhere and neighbors making all sorts of noise all around us.  So, something to work on.  And the added distraction is probably a good thing.

I was again amused today by how different these two dogs are.  With Perri I have to be so cheerful it makes my face break, jumping around and throwing parties with her.  And it does work, it relaxes her and makes her happy and then she works with drive and enjoyment.  And we really do have to stop after only 10-15 minutes regardless.  This is variable.
With Molly?  A quick little shake of that treat ball is all I need to motivate her.  And I tried to stop working after half an hour and she just stood there staring at me, refusing to come in the house.  She wanted more!  She would do it all day!  

I do have to remind myself that I have a much more longstanding relationship with Molly, and their breed traits, backstory and genetics could not be more different from one another.   The two different flavors are actually very refreshing and good for me to develop my own skills!