Rumi lesson 2--Obedience

I am continually amazed by Rumi and how much energy and stamina he has for training. And he is very forgiving of mistakes I may make. After our 3 lessons with Laura Romanik (whom if she had a website I would gladly link to it ), I have some good solid concrete goals for the next 5 or so weeks. First of all, here is a link to him working in December at an ASCA show in wildcard novice.
This was at a busy dog show with lunch begin cooked and all the usual dog show hubub. So here are our goals:

Work in at least one new place for each of the next 5 weeks.
Work on the forging in straight line heeling.
Work our left turns (and I need to not slow down)
Work on about turns (and I need to not slow down)
Work on the coming back to me on the retrieve faster
Work on Rumi being able to do things with the dumbbell in the mouth (when his mouth is engaged he forgets he can use his hind end to jump/climb)

Of course we'll have other things we're working on like go outs, broad jumps with targets, gloves, signals, drops,.... But the above is our focus. I'll try and post every time we work someplace new.

Herding Clinic

So I am slowly recovering from my very busy weekend of dogs. Thai was not happy that the herding part was only for Rumi! I promised her I would change that at the next clinic. Rumi had a good time at the clinic and enjoyed working for Jack Knox. Although primarily a border collie clinic, there were several aussies besides Rumi there and a Terv. The farm was wonderful, the sheep awesome, and plenty of different size areas for working dogs. Thanks to Denice of Clearfield Stockdogs for hosting the clinic.

Jack and Rumi worked on getting around the sheep and taking time to think before acting (hard for a 16 month old aussie boy!). I was shown clearly where I had given Rumi too much slack and that although he is only 16 months old, he is very ready and able to handle serious, intense work without shutting down. So our goal for the next month (before the Sherry Baker Clinic) is to really have Rumi settle down and take herding as his work, not a game. Of course some of this is predicated on the weather holding so I can actually work dogs!