Tues. Nite Class with Bug

Last night I brought Bug to class. Carmie was sick Thursday – Saturday with a mysterious GI illness. No need to stress her out more when she will be attending the Amanda Shyne workshop later this week. In addition Bug has been feeling so much better; I wanted to see how he did in class.

In general, he did great! We have some major things to work on. Well….one really MAJOR thing that needs a lot of attention….the teeter. Ever since Bug’s fly-off at a private with Erin he has given me MAJOR Eeyore ears on the teeter. He thinks it is NOT FUN AT ALL. Before the fly-off, Bug thought the teeter was the best thing ever. I want to get back to “the best thing ever” state of mind.

The weather has not cooperated with me improving his teeter. All of the rain means I have not been able to set my teeter up in the back yard to play on it and make it the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Now that we might have sun for more than two days in a row I need to set my teeter up and start playing teeter games. I might also have Bug watch Ike and Carmen have a STELLAR time on the teeter and then go do boring tunnels with Bug (in the same vein as what Dawn is doing with Magic). I am also thinking of attaching a piece of pvc to my plank (that is painted and sanded) to work on finding the pivot point (Katrin suggested this). This is something I could do inside regardless of the weather.

We also need to work on our directionals, particularly “out.” Yesterday there was a tunnel/dogwalk discrimination issue and while I was really good about stopping my forward movement and waiting for my dog to think – he had to think A LOT (the tunnel was the out). At one point he started up the dw only to slip while trying to turn to hop off it. Need I say I almost had a heart attack? I asked Katrin and Nancy multiple times if they thought he was moving okay. They did. I need to relax, seriously.

However, he made the correct choice (the tunnel) multiple times after all his thinking.

Given he hasn’t been in class in at least 3 weeks I was really pleased with his performance. He drove through the weaves with quite a bit more speed than last class and looked VERY happy.

I did feel like he was a bit more pokey speed-wise over all. I’m not sure why. Perhaps we need to start doing some wind sprints!