Thursday, July 10, 2008

Happy Ike, Chiro, and Carmie does Switch!

Things have been crazy busy at work and I have been crazy busy out of work, so I haven’t posted.

Tuesday night class Ike was phenomenal. The owners of the barn sat in on class and one of the owners is male and tall. While Ike kept giving him the hairy eyeball, in general he was NOT weirded out by another human watching him. Wow!

He was SUPER happy and wanted to play the entire class even though the humidity was VERY high. I cannot explain it. Katrin and I were talking about it. I think that Bug has given Ike something that I cannot because I am human. He has helped Ike in a way that is intangible. I don’t know, but it is awesome.

I JUST saw that Katrin has posted the course from Tuesday on Monty’s Training Diary. I obviously need to practice weaves with Ike because he did have a bit of trouble with them – coming off the jumps the dogs had quite a bit of speed. Fun course – GREAT night.

Last night Bug had a chiropractor appointment. Dr. Anne added cat's claw to his homeopathic regimen. Cat's claw is very helpful in terms of boosting the immune system and viral infections. He has a small wart that has appeared on his lip and it is probably due to his system being somewhat compromised because of the Lyme and the stress of his new home.

Today Carmen had her fourth 5 Directions class and it went awesome. I have practiced "Switch" with her at home maybe twice and she continued (at home) to be incredibly literal about it. Hmmm. Tonight we started working on "Tight." We had the dog go around a cone toward us - feeding from the hand closest. Carmen immediately understood the concept of "Tight!" When we started practicing "Switch" there was no spinning or adamant attempts to do it the opposite direction. Carmie had a light bulb moment about "switch." Very exciting!

After we worked on "Tight" and "Switch" for a bit Katrin set up a couple of gates. So we asked our dog to go "Tight" around a cone, cone out around a gate, "Switch" around another cone and then another "Out." Carmen was very good! I wish I understood how she learns things.

Then we did the mirror image of this exercise. AND, I almost forgot! I am so proud of myself. I was being very consistent about treating Carmen for "Tight" and neglecting to treat her for "Switch" at the end. This is because she was getting "it" and I am greedy and instead of rewarding her "switch" too, I was trying to go immediately to the "out". It was successful, but I REALLY want her to get "Switch" and want to do it again! So I finally caught myself and rewarded her for a "switch" well done. Hooray! Very fun class!

2 comments:

Blue said...

Good boy Ike! That's so cool that Bug has been so good for Ike. Carmen is doing really well in class too. I think she's figuring out switch and tight faster than I am!

Jules said...

Thanks, Katrin and Blue. I found Switch to be an incredibly difficult thing to learn. It wasn't until I went to the Amanda Nelson seminar that it really clicked for me and I had been working on it for more than a year at that point!