Back yard practice...

Well it was a beautiful day, and after yesterday's not so good class, we decided it was time to hit the back yard for some work. I let all of my frustration from yesterday go (essentially I was flustered the dog was stressed and it just wasn't a good hour) and we started.

So I noticed the grass was a little longer and figured Mr. Harley would want to sniff it, so I came armed with a load of treats. We started with circle work and played a few games and when the tug came out he was EXCITED. We played fetch then worked on him laying on his mat while I set up all the "equiptment" some day I'll post pictures of my make-shift stuff... He got up a few times, but for the most part he stayed at his mat. We need to do some more leave it work inside, cause I dropped a bunch of treats out of my bag and he kept trying to eat the grass around the treats to clean up every morsel. I think we'll do it's your choice from class tomorrow or maybe tonight where I have a pile of treats and his mat, in order to proof the "lie on your mat" command.

So we started with the chute. This was brazen of me; however, I trusted that seeing it was in the same place as last time he'd remember it. He did! (Thank the agility gods, cause he was afraid of it two sessions ago) He was sucked up that chute like a little vacuum. So I grabbed the tug and worked on jumps (set up in 180) the dog walk (where we worked a bit on the stick-it, with a lead-out to the chute).

This was going so well, that I decided to set up weaves. Well a car pulled in the driveway and it was the neighbors (with the dogs), so I raced for Harley, got him on his leash. Luckily one of them clued in I was there and shouted they would leash the dogs :) (very much appreciated, I thanked them later). Harley had a minor melt down. But he did regain partial focus. I thought the idea of weaves were shot at that point and almost gave up, but I got him refocused on me... He didn't have tug drive anymore, but he was still treat motivated, so I got him into a sit-stay and then released him to race through the weaves. I had planned on working on off-side, but figured I'd just do two reps of running with and called it a day. End on a good note, isn't that what we're supposed to do... LOL.

So I am very proud of my little guy for actually staying remotely under control through the whole thing. Still need to build more tug drive, but at least we had it for half of the session.