I tend to be very lucky in life and have got to some very good places by just going with where life takes me. I'm also lucky in that Mark does do planning so generally it's his wind that is favourable LOL.
We are in the process of taking stock of what we have and what we want for our future (our ten year anniversary in February or somebody's milestone birthday can have that effect). The result could lead to some big changes and we are putting our bungalow on the market. I know, all that work we did to make it easy to maintain and energy efficient so we could just enjoy our weekends and now we maybe embarking on another project. Keep your fingers crossed for us and I'll fill you in once we get a buyer and our offer accepted on the house we've seen.
It's also a good time of year to take stock on how we're doing against the plan with our own dogs.
Those of you who follow Mark's blog know he's where he wants to be regarding Devo. Kodi is still not back to full strength and at nearly 9 we are not confident he will ever be. He still enjoys his agility though so we will keep him ticking over.
Torro is a brilliant dog and I am frustrated that I can't seem to harvest his speed in the right time and place. He is such fun to run though and I will keep trying.
Rhyme - now what can I say about that cheeky little monkey :) He is growing up nicely and did some lovely stuff at Anthony Clark's Puppy Camp. He also got over excited and decided to join in everyone else's game - sorry least they can be confident their dog is good with distractions.
Ant was great though and put Rhyme on a lead and got me to do some recalls so Ant could control him if he went off. Needless to say recalls are still our main priority. I have many games to offer him distractions. I get him to ignore food on the floor, toys on the floor and Flint to come to me. He is very good with those now I just need to add Kodi, Torro and lastly Devo to our dogs as a distraction then move on to other dogs playing etc.
His play is continuing to build with every time I go near him us playing tuggie. It is strange to me that some dogs are totally obsessive with tugging (e.g. Kodi & Devo) whilst others need to develop the joy of it. It may be something I do as Torro wasn't toy driven as a pup. Even now he is not one to take the toy away and play on his own preferring instead to bring it to me so we can play together. As an instructor that is a good thing as there is considerable time wasting in a lesson with people who can't get the toys back off their dogs or even worse reinforcement opportunities wasted because people aren't prepared to present the toy as the dog won't share.
I generally avoid the agilitynet forum but a recent post wanting to ban tuggies from shows was unbelievable. Some guy whose dogs were not in control and even attacked another dog blamed use of tuggies by others.
I will do all I can to help Rhyme want to tug with me rather than interfere with other people and their dogs (even though his version is to lick people and want to play with other dogs) and if I can't then I won't put him that situation and I certainly won't be using any form of punishment.
No comments:
Post a Comment