5 Directions # 5

I have been feeding the caramelized onion raw while my in-laws are on vacation. After all, she is staying with me and I feed my dogs raw - it wouldn't be very fair to NOT feed her raw, would it? Does that make me a sneaky, evil DIL? I'll tell you, Carmen's beard and teeth have never looked better! My dh even (FINALLY) acknowledged how much better her beard looks! Anyway, Carmen is now going through detox. : (

Poor pumpkin has been having diarrhea for the past two days (we're at about Day 13 of raw). Needless to say I felt it was better she stay home last night than work! So, I brought Ike to the 5 directions class. We worked on "Go!" and had a blast!

Katrin set up the table, three jumps and a curved tunnel. I worked very hard at not going past the jump in either direction so that I was truly sending Ike to both the table and the tunnel. Also, not running into an invisible wall, i.e. consistency in my speed/motion!!

Ike was much more excited about running to the table than the tunnel. It might be because the tunnel was located toward the front of the barn, so he was heading into the other students and dogs. It might also be that he still just doesn’t like tunnels that much! Not sure.

Katrin realized that I have inadvertently trained Ike to Go with a low arm rather than up and extended (or Ike has trained me). Whenever Ike would question whether I REALLY wanted him to take that tunnel, as soon as I moved my arm like I had a bowling ball in my hand Ike flew into it. Hmmm...makes sense. Ike is quite a contrarian so there are many time in life when I do a bowling ball like swing and say, "Let's Go!" hoping the motion and excitement will convince him that YES, he really does want to walk down the street.

Tessa, the younger Viszla sister to Makin, had a GREAT night last night. Neil and Lael have been bringing her to Makin's class to do some counter-conditioning about the barn. For some reason Tessa had gotten completely wigged out about the barn - she would totally stress in it and be unable to learn, focus, or have fun. Neil and Lael have slowly but surely built up her confidence and last night she was happy as can be IN THE BARN. She even ran the course to cap off the evening. Hooray!!