Not a good start!

Oh dear, not such a good start to my blog then - no updates since November! To be honest not that much has been going on (its not an excuse - honestly!) Agility pretty much shuts down over Christmas and New Year to give both the dogs and handlers a rest! Instead we have been doing lots of lovely extra long walks with them, and lots of other bits of training that I don't get time to do normally.

The only one I have kept doing a bit of agility with over the break is Smudge. His training has been coming along nicely. I have been training his contacts using a target, and this seems to be working well. If I am being really picky, I would like him driving down to them a bit faster and with more determination, so that is my aim when we go back to training. I obviously haven't taught him that well enough yet! I must do some work on the target again at home with the clicker to get a firmer touch. Its great to look back at video and find things that I can really improve on. The one below was taken when he was just a bit younger. After looking at this video (and with some help from friends - you know who you are!) I have improved on this a lot (well at least I hope I have!).

His weaves have also been coming along. I decided to train Smudge using the V weaves, running ahead to a target and he has picked them up nice and quickly. Each day I have been taking my weaves to a different location and practicing them just a few times. My whole aim has been to get him weaving confidently ahead of me, and totally independantly from the start. So far, so good - I hope! One thing I learnt from Maisie is that having to be near your dog whilst they weave can make for some difficult handling areas, not to mention being slower. Fingers crossed he will have a good entry as you can see he seems to have that worked out. However, we do have one very small problem.........my weaves do not have a metal base (they are the cheap stick in the ground ones!) Now, when Smudge weaves on a normal set, he finds it hard to get his feet right. I can only guess that it is the metal base putting him off. Lesson learnt for the future.....use a set with a metal base from the start! Another training aim to work on then! For his age I am happy with his weaving so far. I feel that he still has a lot more speed in him yet, but I am sure that will come with confidence. Better to be slower and accurate to start I suppose!? Link to video is below. I can't quite work out how to embed it yet, so if anyone has any tips please advise! Have tried copy/pasting the embeded code into the post but I just get an error message! Grrrrrr.

http://www.onetruemedia.com/shared?p=4a931645b90e4871e6319a&skin_id=801&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=text_url

Before christmas we were working on lots of jumping exercises, trying to get him working ahead of me and allowing me to cross behind him, as well as his left and right commands. All in all I am really enjoying my time training with him, and I think he is too. He is really quick to learn, so I hope I will do him justice!!

My only worry with Smudge is his height. At the moment he is borderline (and I mean BORDERLINE) small/medium. If he ends up in medium I think he will stuggle long term ,and I hate the thought of what it will do to his health in the long run. Still, no point worrying about it until he has been properly measured. He is 15 months on the 11th January, so D day will be shortly after that! Fingers crossed that he gets into small.

This morning it was very cold and dark at 7am when I walked, although it seems that once again the snow will miss Jersey. We never get snow - its so unfair!!!!

To finish I just couldn't resist adding these Christmas pics (even if it is a few days late - its not twelth night yet!) There was no way on this earth that Maisie was posing with a Christmas hat on! Worryingly I think the plaits kinda suit Smudge?! Hehe!!!