New Tricks

Bethena and Iggy learned some new things today even before we went to class. We spent part of the morning playing outside with the frisbee in the melting snow. We had fun and both Bethena and Iggy wore themselves out.

After lunch, they were in the backyard when the UPS driver pulled up the driveway. (How he made it down the muddy road, I don't know.) They both know the UPS driver at work; he makes deliveries every day and they get a biscuit every time they are out in the play pen when he arrives. I was talking on the phone and looked out the window to all of a sudden see both dogs leaping off the mound of avalanched snow in between the house and garage (the mound is higher than the 5 foot tall gate) into the front yard to greet the driver....

Luckily, the driver was unfazed by two Labradors who were pretty certain that he must have a biscuit for them somewhere.

Iggy and I worked out a little bit before class, I tried to get him to focus on me even when there were distractions (Martha was there, too, working with Gemmy). Even though he is still very much a pup and therefore easily distracted, he did fine. At the end of class, I brought him back in for a run-through and he was awesome. He wasn't into the groove of heeling, but he paid attention (mostly) and showed he understood what was going on (mostly).

Bethena did well, too, and is starting to understand the drop-on-recall well enough that she's anticipating the drop now. I practiced a little targeting with her at the beginning of class using a target stick. She thought that the point of the exercise was to touch something sticking out from another thing, so tried to shortcut going the whole 6 feet to the target stick by touching a piece of PVC pipe that was 3 feet closer and was sticking out from another piece of equipment. Bethena never fails to amaze me.