Summer Fun

With the warm weather well and truly upon us, what could be better than spending a few hours at the beach with your best mates? Not much I say!! It was a great morning, made even better by the fact we had the beach all to ourselves :-)

I love taking them to the beach because you really get to see their different personalities come out. Jetzen will plow straight into the water without a care in the world. The lead comes off and he is off and running.

Phoenix is a bit more cautious, especially around water. She would much rather hang back at my heels and suss everything out. I would say it takes her a good 20 min before she will investigate the water. Once she does though she has a great time playing chasey with the waves. She reminds me of a little kid standing, staring at the water and as the wave comes in they turn and run as fast as they can away from the water, and then, as it receedes they chase it back down again. It is hillarious when she miss times her run and the water touches her paw unexpectedly, she leaps sideways in the air to get away from it - funny!!

There was a great sand bar a little ways out and I decided to wade across and see if the dogs would follow. As I headed out Jetz came running from up the beach at a zillion miles an hour, as did Nix, however as they approached the water Nix hit the brakes while Jetzen bounded in. As he realised she had stopped, he sort of froze mid bounce through the waves, looked at me, looked at Nix and couldn't decide what to do. He chose to go back to Nix and then proceeded to jump into the water look at me, bark at Nix and jump out again. Look at the water, bark at Nix and jump in the water again. This went on for about 5 minutes. I swear he was trying to tell Nix it was ok!! Eventually Nix decided to come in and they had a great time running through the shallow water.

2010

Ok so the New Year has arrived - time to get off my butt, stop focusing on those things I have no control over and work on the things I do have control over. Time to stop making excuses for the things my dogs do that I don't like and find solutions to turn those behaviours into something more constructive!!

After a few weeks off training my dogs are well and truly ready to get back into the swing of things and so am I - time to switch the brain from holiday mode into work mode and get back into it.

So my to do list for the rest of summer.......

PHOENIX

1. Plank work for her dog walk - give her a solid understanding of what I expect as her end criteria
2. Weavers - Getting her consistency up on a straight set of poles without reducing her drive in them.
3. More single jump work - mainly to improve my consistency in signals that I am giving!!!
4. Stand for exam
5. A new trick - yet to be decided upon.

JETZEN

1. Targeting - lots of it.
2. Flatwork - circle work, come to hand, etc
3. Ignoring and not barking at the little yappy over the back fence that does not shut up!! Damn dog takes great delight in standing at the back fence and trying to raz my dogs up - grrr.
4. Positions - increasing duration.
5. A new trick - yet to be decided upon.

So there you go. Thats the start of my Summer training - deciding exactly what I want to work on - now to get on with it. So folks anytime you wish, please feel free to ask how it's going. No matter how accountable you are to yourself, there is always extra motivation in knowing other people are following up on what you are doing too!!

So to everyone - I hope you had a fabulous Christmas and wish that 2010 brings you much success in all you attempt, both with and without your canine friends. Here's to a great year!!