Productive Weekend

So far it has been a very productive weekend for me! Again, helps to relieve the stress when I can mark multiple things off my to-do list. I've got most of my road food figured out and am going to wait until Friday night to pick up my food for the agility weekend. I popped by Plato's Closet to pick up a pair of cheap jeans that I don't feel bad Bedazzling the crap out of. Stopped at Claire's to pick up a few remaining accessories for my Halloween costume. And then it was a quick stop at PetSmart to pick up cat necessities and a new Zoom Groom for the dogs! The rest of the day was spent playing with the dogs, getting chores done around the house, and then going to the ballet in the evening with some girlfriends. Awesome day!

But I haven't updated about Friday night's obedience match with the danes. I ended up getting there pretty late and actually missed Heffner's Beginner Novice run completely. I was waiting at the house to sign for my iPhone, which requires a direct signature in order to be delivered. I didn't want my Saturday to be wasted by having to stick around the house waiting. Thankfully I at least got there for Bess Graduate Novice run. And I am VERY happy to say that we have a recall!! And a pretty enthusiastic one at that! I changed my "stay" command from an actual stay to a wait this past week. I saw another handler at the previous match use that command instead of stay and it got me to thinking. Bess has awesome stays. Even in the face of some crazy distractions that have cropped up at times, she's held her stays. I was starting to think that maybe the stay command was too strong for her. She has a wait command and it's generally my pause command and is very light. It seemed to work pretty well! We did have a couple of times where she still held her stay, but otherwise it was great! She came rip roaring up to me! Even with her dumbbell! The down side to these enthusiastic recalls that she currently has is that our drop on recall has gone out the window, at least temporarily. I'll be working on that this week. I have a feeling a lot of it had to do with me brain farting and giving a slightly different cue than what I've been using at home. I kept holding my arm up in the air for an extended period of time and her drops have always been not so great when I forget and do that. As long as I have a quick up and down motion, she's pretty solid.

At this current time, we're not futzing with perfectly straight fronts or worrying about crooked sits on the finish. She's come a long way and I want to get a firm foundation in the behaviors and have her firmly in the mind set that she CAN think through these situations in competition and still perform them before I start asking for more accuracy from her. My obedience instructor is completely in agreement on this as well. We need reliable behaviors before we start nit picking.

After everything was over I did take Heffner in the ring and sort of do an informal run through on my own. He was distracted as usual, but did pretty well. The heeling portion is going to be our bug a boo because that's when he has a tendency to do some sight seeing. Otherwise I feel pretty good about where he's at.

The weather so far today is pretty awesome! I started the day by taking the dogs for a hike and it was just gorgeous out! I'm finishing some things up around the house and then I'm heading north to go visit Stacie and Jere and their crew, which means that I get to see Greta!!! Greta is Bora's sister. So excited!!