Busy, Busy, Busy

So, can you tell school has started back up. Not just school for the kids, but also my graduate course work. Both training and blogging about training have suffered. However, I'm going to try and post at least once a week. Rumi's running A-frame is okay, even with sporadic training we've had. Time to start sequencing I think :) His splat is coming along nicely, although not consistently enough I would want to remove the barrier. But his flop is becoming even more solid as the differences are becoming clearer. Or Practice. Or something. :) I continue to doodle with his fronts and finishes and play fun scent games when there is time.

I know this is Rumi's blog, but he said it was okay if I gave Thai a few minutes :) I was working the broad jump with her and she was cutting the corner. I thought about my recent lesson with Kristen and Sheik and decided that was my corner, not hers. Jumped on the corner to claim it once or twice (no lead rope) but with the intention that that was my corner. Had a nice response. We'll see if it holds up with her as well as it did with Sheik when he tried to take some of my space. But it is a different way of looking at that corner so thought I'd experiment with it a little.

Broad Jump

Rumi had a few months where he couldn't do the broad jump at Bill and Belinda's. He could do it outside at my house (obviously we are talking summer and early fall here) but had problems else where. I tried putting the target out. I tried some gentle compulsion. I tried many things. And I was frustrated. He had had the behavior very solid over last winter and spring. And now it was gone...which was not a big deal...but I couldn't easily get it back which was confusing and frustrating. Until I started doing agility again this winter. And I had my DUH moment. I had trained Rumi's broad jump totally different than any of my other dogs. I had taught him to jump using Linda M.'s jumping method. And that included the broad jump. So I went back and reshaped the broad jump in, oh, like 2 minutes. Rumi offered me 17 kajillion behaviors in like 10 seconds and then jumped the boards and his light bulb went on and he hasn't missed one since. Including at the match Tuesday.

He'd never done a broad jump with a target or any of those other things I had tried, so they didn't help at all.

Below is the video of his match Tuesday in novice and open. I have the annoying music in the background because the wonderful strangers who video taped for me (thank you all a ton!!!!) were talking and I don't want to accidentally embarrass them with something unintentionally caught on my tape!