Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Switches, Get Outs, and poor Jazz management

We worked on Switch and Get Out today in Katrin’s class. Well, what do you know, the seminar last weekend paid off! With my new understanding of switch I was successfully able to complete quite a few switches with Ike! Hooray! Ike doesn’t find Get Out that confusing (or maybe I don’t and therefore he doesn’t?).

Our biggest issue is that *I* am not comfortable once I am farther than 5’ to 7’ feet away from him, and he notices and returns to me or takes the wrong entrance! However, Katrin was pretty successful at schooling me to keep moving! And we were finally able to nail a few “Get Outs” at the 6’ + range! Yay Ike!

In general Ike was in a stellar mood last night. He was wagging away, moving REALLY fast (for him), and interacting with people and dogs. I think he must have taken a happy pill yesterday. Who knows, he was *on* last night.

One of the final sequences we worked on started on the table in whatever our preferred position is (down for Ike) and then 4 jumps in a straight line. Then we reversed it and sent our dog to the table and asked for whatever our criteria is, preferably from some distance. Well, I was able to send Ike to the table (YAY!).

The first time I was a goober and was all hunched over when I was asking for his down and then I essentially released him from his down for his cookie (handler slap). Next time we both nailed it. Hooray! Ike downed and I didn’t release him, I went and treated him. Very good job, Ikey P.

Switch is starting to make sense to me; last night was a great class for us.

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I did ruin the vibe by taking Jazz out of the car and having very poor judgment. I was trying to walk him for a pee break and with the Competition students arriving Jazz was totally over stimulated.

I went to say “hi” to Sandy and Sadie and after some Jazz-Sadie sniffing they had a bit of a snarl fest. I deserve a major smack for letting that happen. I *hate* being such a bad foster-mum. I feel like I should have been well aware that he would be over stimulated by everything and that greeting a strange dog would be a bad combination. Argh, I suppose I should be happy it was only noise and that it was Sandy and Sadie.

For the future and I will manage better. To that end I am getting a Gentle Leader for Jazz, per Katrin’s recommendation. The GL will help with Jazz’ staring, and make it more difficult to snarf things up on walks. This a.m. (I am finishing this post on Wednesday) Jazz snarfed up a chicken bone on our walk! I was able to wrestle half of it out of his mouth but then I had to take him home and dose him with peroxide. Yikes. He seemed very down about the puking, but it is better than the alternative!!

2 comments:

ann-and-partner said...

Does peroxide cause vomiting? How did you get him to drink it? This sounds like something I need to remember.

Jules said...

Ann, I posed the info above. It is good stuff to know.