Ready For the Weekend!!

I am so ready for this weekend!! Exciting change of scenery that is about to go down here tomorrow and I will be sure to post many pictures!:0)

I've got Bess entered in Rally Excellent and Advanced just tomorrow. Hopefully we will earn RAE leg #6. And I think that roughly about the time we're finished up in the rally ring, we'll head on over to the frenchie ring to pick up Ruthie!!! And watch the frenchies in the ring as well.:0) About an hour after the frenchies go in, the danes go in. There's a decent sized entry in bitches, so we'll see what happens. I'll hope for the best.

I did get out with the dogs today and worked them with toys and trying to use me as reinforcement as well. Heffner thinks this is FANTASTIC!! I had temporarily forgotten how frackin' high he gets when I've got a toy. And he doesn't tire. He may be panting pretty heavily, but the sight of that toy tucked under my arm keeps him going. I was also really happy with how happy he stayed after I put the toy away. We did some recall and finish games where he got to chase me and he thought that was great too.

I also realized that working the dogs like this is going to require a change of scenery. I think I'm going to have to start taking them to some tennis courts to do this kind of work. I need a lot of room for Heffner especially and I would prefer something enclosed so that I can work them off leash. I also came to realize that working them like this is not always going to be an option in the morning. It requires that I be very alert and awake in order to avoid the jumping bean that is Heffner. It seriously took him about 15 min. to settle down enough that he wasn't trying to climb all over me. You can't avoid those paws when you're running at half mast.

Bess is going to make me work my ass off. She's not a huge play drive dog. She really wasn't interested in any of the variety of toys that I brought out. I've got a couple more to try on her, but at the moment I'm not terribly positive that I've got what it'll take. Somehow I've gotta find that toy that makes her go ga-ga. Her training session was okay. We worked on a couple of the rally stations that I realized we haven't gone over or seen on a course in quite some time. It's usually about that time that I get bit in the butt for not practicing it. So I think we're ready there. The rest is just going to have to be a work in progress. Right now I don't have a terribly happy working dog unless I've got yummy delicious food.

With us luck tomorrow!!