Official FDSA Videographer

I took the girls to the park tonight to work on Generalizing Agility Things.   I was nervous to take Perri somewhere other than home and gasp!  expect her to be motivated to do anything.  I was not sure if Perri would be interested in playing with her tennis ball like she is at home.

She was.  This felt very positive to me!  There are two "moods" that Perri gets in regarding being motivated by the tennis ball.   One mood involves me really having to work hard to get her interested in the ball.  She may be worried about Some Sound or Something That She Saw , but if I crawl on the ground and tease her enough and don't push her to go too fast, I can always get her to overcome her worries and relax into a game of ball.  And then we can train.    Or!  Sometimes I can just bounce the ball on the ground and I have a lot of dog.  Thankfully Perri was in the latter mood tonight!  We worked on the practice chute as well as weave poles.  Perri was slow in the weave poles at first, even with the channel open a bit.  I was almost happy to see that, since that is what we experience at trials.  By the end of our session she was dancing through the poles (I did 6 poles channel, 6 straight.)  There were zero issues or hesitations with the chute, even given the new environment.  I am hopeful for tomorrow's AKC trial tomorrow!  My main desire is to see Perri be happy at the trial, and it sure would be nice if she would go into the chute, darnitall.

With Molly we worked on straight poles briefly.  But we mostly focused on the exercises that we are working through in our weave pole class that we are enrolled in in the Fenzi Academy.  I was really proud of Molly, too.  There were Guys Working and Perri was barking from the car, and people were driving in and out of the park.  It was a struggle for her to push through it, but she did.   I was video'ing a good bit of our work and I also saw my own stress in the videos.  I was late to throw Molly's treats, I was forgetting to click good performance.  It was good for me to see because it helps me to know what I need to work on.

Unrelated to this evening's park session, Ein's retrieve training continues to go well!  It is not going fast though!   That's okay.  He is now biting the bar consistently, even lingering there at times.  I am experimenting with Ein on how to progress next.  With Perri, taking the dumbbell and doing a chin target worked well.   That seems to disturb Ein.  Right now I am working on Ein picking the DB up from the floor and we are enjoying focusing on that for now.   We will figure out the best way for Ein!  He is so overjoyed to be training consistently on something.