LCCOC is between obedience class sessions offered to the public. Several LCCOC folks (10-12) met at BCBS this evening at 7:00 PM to practice with our own dogs. Rarely are we all available to train together since on any given night 4 us are teaching at 7:00 Pm and a few more at 8:00 Pm. Jerry started with healing and worked through the novice exercises. I had Bern out first so he got to do healing. Jerry called at least 3 long sets of healing patterns ... Bern and I both had plenty of healing practice. We practiced figure 8s off-lead with Tracey and John trying to get Bern to not lag on the outside [still needs work]. Bern is learning a utility stand for exam so i got some pointers from John and Tracey about what I need to "fix' so our effort will pass in the ring. Bern politely stands for the exam part... even letting Tracey give him a full body hug. He is still somewhat unsure on the return and sort of slinks into heal position.
I switched out dogs so Grace could practice stays. She melted on her "sit" a couple of times (every other dog in the line was on a down so we did extra long exercises for both cycles)... I thought we had the melting "sit" fixed but all it took was Jerry walking by clapping and Grace tried to become invisible on the concrete by crouching. We moved onto recalls. Grace's first recall was a disaster.. she ran over to sniff a spot on the concrete that all the other dogs had checked out during healing practice. Satisfied she was not missing any treats, her further attempts were much better. Away from the group we worked on finishes (still need to discover the left finish in Grace before the end of May) and healed through the Rally cones.
Tracey and I then got out the dumbbells and practiced retrieves. Grace is continuing to improve on holding the dumbbell until I take it but she plays with the dumbbell in her mouth instead of holding it politely. I'll have to fix this if we ever can pass a stand for exam in the Novice ring and intend to show in Open. Bern showed off his "retrieve" for Tracey.. she immediately took the dumbbell and the dog from me and told me I was being too soft on him. After a couple of tries Tracey had figured out where/how to hold his mouth closed and have him walk the dumbbell in by backing up and putting pressure under his chin with a finger. It seems that she had to do this maneuver with previous dogs and so had some idea of an approach. I guess we will try this tomorrow morning and see how it goes. It only took a few times of the more forced retrieve and Bern actually voluntarily carried the dumbbell a few steps before he realized what he was doing.. panicked.. and dropped the dumbbell. Tracey did comment, however, that his efforts were significantly better than when she saw his retrieve attempts a few months ago. She thinks he can learn to do this... I hope she is right.
