I really do have the best dogs! I've been worried that with the new job and not spending nearly the time I would like training them that their performances would be lackluster and unpolished, but I was really proud of both of them on all accounts this weekend. I could not have asked for a better debut in our new northeastern home!

First Spy gets a whole paragraph all to herself, since she so often gets tacked on as an aside. She really deserves a whole post just for her, but I'm kinda running late tonight. I didn't get either of her runs on Friday taped, but I so wish I had! Not only were they great, but they flew by so fast I actually had trouble remembering them when I was done! She really does fly out there! First was open standard which was chalk full of traps:

I was a little worried about that opening. The first jump to the dogwalk was headed straight at the ring crew table, so it would have been easy for her to blow off the dogwalk in favor of visiting or sniffing. Then coming off the dogwalk she was headed straight at the out gate... another potential point I could lose her. She was a super star though. Super focused and responsive. She broke her start line a little as I led out just past the first jump, she just stood up, so I waited a moment to see what she would do and she kind of settled into her stand without threatening to move or sniff, so I released her. We haven't worked enough of proofing start lines when she is this high, so I accepted this start line for now. Then it was all a blur! I will admit, I feel like my handling was frantic because I'm just not used to her being this fast and I don't completely trust her on sends still. Front crossed between 3 and 4 (people who kept dog on left had lots of OC's up the A-frame, some people tried blind crosses out of the tunnel, same result), into the chute, then into 5. Waited for her to exit, then rear crossed on the flat to 6. I didn't want to try to front cross there because I was afraid she wouldn't see me and wind up way out in no man's land before I could call her back. She did nearly end up on the dogwalk before I could call her off and get her in the tunnel at 9. She really missed my lateral motion and front cross cue, so something to work on. Front crossed coming out of the tunnel and did A-frame on my left (people who tried to do A-frame on their right wound up with their dogs back in the tunnel on the downside of the frame.) She got right on the table, downed, but then did pop up once. Still need to proof the table when she's this high too. The rest was simple, she nailed her weaves and looked like a pro! She was first out of about 8-10 dogs, the only one to run clean with a time of 53.19s, 3.49 YPS.
Next, her first time running a "big dog course," excellent JWW.

They actually moved jump 5 out away from the post (indicated by the empty white dots) and fiddled around with it for a while, trying to make sure the post would not be in any one's way. Not sure they really succeeded. She held her start line fine, but did look away as I was leading out, so I had to say her name before releasing her. Hmm. Nice forward send over 3 with a front cross between 3 and 4. Tried to send to 6 so I could get in position to stay on the dog's left and push to 8. Instead, I didn't pay attention to what I was doing, lolly-gagged around the pinwheel and completely forgot about the push until we were headed out into no man's land in the upper left hand part of the course. I realized it last second, made a very late push where Spy would have been completely within her rights to spin or blow past jump 8, but she saved my butt and took 8. Looking back, I should have front crossed between 6 and 7 to keep forward momentum through the pinwheel (and idiot proof the handling so I couldn't forget to push), then rear crossed 9 which would have given even more forward momentum through that second pinwheel. Even Spy doesn't keep up speed through pinwheels if I'm just standing still in the middle turning my body. No matter. Rear crossed 13 and sent her into the weaves... again she weaved like a pro! (I'm so proud of her for that!) This time, she really paid attention to my lateral motion and front cross cue to get her into 16. Good girlie! Then finished with dog on my right. Another clean run (barely!) and first place. I think she was the only qualifier. Can't remember how many dogs. 35.4s, 4.04 YPS. I looked at the Excellent B dogs though and she wouldn't have even placed. Hard to say how much time we might have saved if I didn't botch up the middle of the course.
All in all, I'm very proud of how my baby dog is coming along. She held her start lines (mostly), did all her weaves and contacts (ok, I babysat her contacts some), stayed with me and was super speedy! She's right where I expect her to be at this point, and is on track to be really good some day.

Then Marron! Ah, so close! She's such a good girl though. She needed two more legs for her CD, and she very nearly got both. Doing two days of obedience just reminded how much I HATE obedience (said with a huge grin!) It's really hard to get the timing down of when I should get ready, how long before the sits and downs. Not sure why they failed to mention the fact that they were splitting the long sits/downs, and that I was the cutoff dog, the start of the second group. So I'm standing there, thinking I'm next in the ring, when they say they are going to do the sits/downs, then take a lunch break. Are you kidding me! Who takes a lunch break in the middle of a class? So after I go, I think I have some time to grab a bite, then come back for my groups' sits/downs. I nearly missed them, but the last dog had a, um, incident requiring them to call the AKC rep over to escort this Bouv off the premises for biting a ring steward. Lucky for me, too bad for that dog and it's handler. Marron held her stays great, despite the Corgi who was to be next to her during the group stays goosing her and being completely infatuated with her prior to going in the ring. She wound up in second place, out of 3 qualifiers! I got some video of the individual stuff. She was a little stressy, but not so much that she couldn't work through it.

Her performance on Sunday was just as great, except our stupid recall again! I really need to practice that more with other people around because she again thought it was a stand for exam. When I gave her the stay command (back of my hand) she thought it was the stand command (palm of my hand presented as a target.) If I had left her in a stand, we would still have qualified, but lost points. Instead, I asked her to sit again, then left and did the rest of the exercise beautifully. Since I gave her two commands to stay, we were disqualified. I don't get it. They would rather see a dog do an exercise sloppily than see them do it correctly? Especially when she is simply anticipating a different exercise. I'll take it. I don't blame her... she did awesome! But I was soooo looking forward to NOT having to do any more obedience, so I am bummed about that.
One thing that I am very proud of is how many compliments she got. While I didn't think her performance was exactly compliment worthy, apparently the judges and everyone else did. Just wait until she gives the performance I know she can and they'll really be impressed!

Rain rain rain. And I mean POURING rain! All day long. The dogs were looking at me expectantly all morning long so in the afternoon I broke down and packed up the car to go over to Tails-U-Win to use the indoor training ring. Since I haven't rented the indoor before, I really didn't know how likely it was to be free, but the dogs really wanted to play, so I thought it was worth a shot. There was a puppy obedience class going on in an adjoining ring, separated by a wall, and the instructor said it was fine if we were on the agility side making noise. She was very sweet about it. So I set up my course and played around on it. Just as I was finishing up, someone showed up for an agility lesson right after. Perfect timing. She told me to just leave the equipment out. So as I'm packing up my stuff, she's talking to that first instructor (whose class is now over) about her dog's recent diagnosis of a brain tumor, how his career is over and she's just going to let him have as much fun as she can until he can't play any more. And the dog was an adorable little JRT too! It didn't seem like interjecting to involve myself in the conversation and give her my condolences. Then her instructor showed up. This instructor has been around before my outdoor lessons with Bonnie and she always seems to be giving me the evil eye. I'm not really sure what on I earth I could have done to offend her, other than show up for my appointed lesson time and happen to be leaving a non-scheduled practice time right as her scheduled lesson was beginning. Ok, so my conversation with her student did cut into her lesson time, but it was the student who kept asking me questions (having found out what I do for a living!) Not that I could answer many of her questions; it takes an MRI to really know what's going on. I did excuse myself to leave once it seemed like the student was not going to end the conversation herself. And so she had to swap out the 24" weaves I had out for other ones... at least most of the equipment was out! Geez, I'd really like to know what I could have done to piss her off. I haven't even said two words to her!

Anyway, other than the weirdness with the instructor, it was a pretty good session. I set up the circled part of this course, with a teeter where the #14/19 jump is and a table where the end of the dogwalk is:

I started on the table, did the course as numbered, then went to the teeter off the tire, back to the table. Marron did pretty well. She looked more comfortable on the rubber matting than I've ever seen her run. The dogs in the puppy class did do some barking, which worried her some, but I did manage to get her to play with a ball or a frisbee a few times. Even when running for treats, I managed to have her pretty drivey. It was a pretty simple course. It was Marron's second time seeing 24" weaves, and she was quite tentative at first, but was really getting the hang of it by the end. She didn't stay in them quite as well as I had hoped- I was trying to handle it by leaving them in the weaves to get to the landing side of #5 for a front cross. It took a little bit of practice to get her to stay in them. It will just take practice and she will be just as dependable as with the regular weaves. Drive to the tunnel, front cross coming of the tunnel, handle the next jump and tire with dog on left, turn and drive to teeter and end with the table. The point of today was really just to get them both out to run because they were so bored inside. I wanted to get Marron into drive with the dogs barking on the other side of the wall (which she did pretty well), and I wanted Spy to get more practice on the A-frame with the box. Again, I can't figure out how to change the height of the A-frame with just one person. The indoor A-frame is on wheels (which I think you're supposed to take it off the wheels to run the dog, but I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get it back on) but I still couldn't lift one side up without moving the whole thing so I could reset the chains. So box work on the A-frame isn't going as smoothly as it should. She does usually get the correct number of hits, but sometimes she just leaps from right above the box because she isn't able to control her descent at speed. It would be so much nicer if I could lower the frame and make it easier for her to maintain control of her body, but they just don't make agility equipment so that a 112 lb person can move it single handed! It was Spy's first time seeing 24" weaves, and I think she actually got the hang of the footwork faster than Marron. She still heads off to wander any time there is the slightest disconnect, like when she misses the contact and she knows it, or she misses a weave entry. I'm starting to wonder if the mistake occurs because she's already thinking about wandering off, or if wandering off to stress sniff is her version of shutting down like Marron because she knows what she just did wasn't right.

I've been trying to be diligent about keeping up with the trick training and free shaping.  Ok, not so much with the free shaping.  I just don't find myself to have good enough timing to remove myself completely from the training.  Marron doesn't like it... she would much rather interact with me showing her in some way (even a very small way) what I want from her.  For instance, trying to free shape a "take it/hold it" command (not sure yet if it will be one command or two) by having the object on the floor and trying to free shape her to pick it up and hold it for longer and longer.  Yeah no.  It turned into a lot of pawing at the object, pushing it, picking it up in the mouth and throwing it, whining while nose targeting it, etc.  But simply pick the thing up and present it to the dog where the most logical thing to do is take it in their mouth and VOILA!  In one session we made it ten times as far as we made it in three with the free shaping!  Even Spy, I think she gets too frantic trying to figure out what I want when there are so many options like there is with free shaping.  With the object on the floor, she just simply offered too many things all in succession for me to click anything accurately and the waters just got murkier and murkier.  But ask her to sit, and require her to stay sitting with all four feet on the floor, while offering it from my hand as above, and she is much more thoughtful and making progress much faster.  So basically, it's coming down to I just don't like free shaping.  So many people have such luck with it but I just suck at it.

Another trick I have been working on with Marron has been to have her get on my back while I am down on all fours.  She really didn't know what to do with this one at first.  It's another tough one to free shape since it's hard to keep an eye on her while I'm in position.  I put her mat on my back to get her up there a few times, then removed it and it worked like a charm.  Offer her the treat over my shoulder properly and I easily got her into the correct position.  The idea behind this trick was to turn it into a back vault for disc dog.  Wow did she get the transition fast!  I had started teaching her to jump off over my head on cue, but as soon as the frisbee was introduced, no cue needed to have her jump off!  It was vault right from the get go.  At first she was hitting quite low on my back and it felt like she was jumping over sideways rather than doing any vaulting, but she's starting to get the hang of hitting my back higher so she can go over forward.  Once she's got the trick down, I probably won't practice it much, just like I don't practice leg vaults much any more now that she's learned it.  I may have to introduce a verbal cue for her to "stall" or get on my back and stay there until released, so that we can practice that instead of doing vault after vault.  I will have to get some video some day when it isn't dark out (much of our practice is by flood light now!)

The shorties sequences are going well.  Marron gets just about everything five times faster than Spy does.  Spy's enthusiasm has been lagging a little lately.  She's been loping her way through sequences lately rather than attacking them like normal.  Don't know what's going on there but it's great timing with the cluster in a few weeks!  Could it be from taking her off course when she wanders?  She usually only wanders when we get disconnected due to sloppy handling or her just not knowing what I'm asking, so am I wrong for expecting her to pay attention any way?  Could it be affecting her overall enthusiasm?  I REALLY don't want another Marron!

Had another lesson with Bonnie today.  The weather's getting cold, so we moved inside.  Marron hates training indoors.  Floors are terrible for picking up dropped frisbees and they just plain don't fly right without proper air currents.  She's always 10 times worse indoors.  I actually let her run around the building while Bonnie and I talked and she set up the numbers for the first course.  I wanted Marron to get more comfortable with the surroundings, to let her investigate dark scary corners before being asked to work.  Then I pulled out her ball and tried to get her to play.  At first I thought it was going to be a success.  She trailed after the ball, trying to get it to STOP rolling (stupid floors!)  But then a dog barked in the doggie day care in another part of the building and that was that.  Done.  Finished.  I didn't even bother trying to get her to play with a toy after that.  Bonnie let me just work her for food and she did ok, but not like she has been doing outside for the frisbee.  I signed Marron up for a seminar next weekend with Bonnie, so we'll see how that goes.  It could be a big fat failure.  I love this dog, but I wish I knew how to get her over this and get her to enjoy playing with me!

Anyway, the goal for the day was rear crosses.  Bonnie asked me at the start how our rear crosses are and I laughed.  AWFUL!  She had predicted that.  Must be something about my handling!  Anyway, rather than make the light, flowy rear crosses people with big dogs do, she had me pushing them through the turns more.  Attack it if you will.  Run hard, put on the brakes at just the right spot, send forward, then push and run hard again on the new line.  That's roughly the new technique.  It really did have them keeping up their speed more through the turns since they (especially Marron) cue their speed off mine.  The more sprinting I do, the better and this has me sprinting more rather than decelerating too much.  Same thing with 180's.  Rather than decelerate and send forward, floating through the turn, she had me sprint all the way to the first jump, then turn and sprint away.  Definately forces me to look ahead to the next jump, rather than stand around making direct eye contact with the dog, another thing she's been getting on me about.

I also finally made it all the way through the November Clean Run and there is a set of sequences at the end that I can set up with my equipment here at home.  I also found out that I can move around the equipment at the outdoor agility field.  There are no classes being held out there any more, which is why the equipment wasn't moved in over a week.  Yay!  So I actually have stuff to work on for the next month!

Today was a busy day.  Besides going to the trial which turned into a big fat FAIL, we also went to the park where I did some tracking with Marron and set up AgilityNerd's sequence.

Tracking- I think there were cross tracks galore.  Or Marron was just very distracted at the beginning.  She did horrible at the start and didn't really get into it until the first turn.  I started her pretty much perpendicular to the track and I think she didn't really have the scent when I told her "find it"- she was still checking out the numerous POOPS in the field.  It was a two turn track.  She overshot the second one badly, but circled right back to it which may have been a consequence of her never really taking good scent at the start.  I'll have to get to the field even earlier- I'll be going riding at 9am on good days on the weekends, so maybe it will encourage me to get up and go before riding.

I worked on the first of these courses today:  agilitynerd.com/blog/agility/courses/steve/steve_2009_10_18.html
My homework with Spy is supposed to be forward sends since that is where I seem to lose her focus the most.  She does the send, but forgets to check back in and heads off to check out whatever catches her attention in the environment.  These sequences seem to fit the bill.  Of course, she's perfect here.  She knocked a bar on jump 4, but I was a little late getting into position for the FC out of the tunnel, so I forgave her.  She also refused to send to jump 6 the first time through, but it was starting to get dark and the jump is kind of near the fence (I have Invisible Fence) so I forgave her for that as well.  She broke her start line once too, so I was able to correct her for that.  Though, my correcting her consisted of just picking her up and putting her back.  I think Bonnie wants me to take her off course and not let her play if she breaks.  Old habits are hard to break.  Other than those little bloopers, her turns were very efficient and she did the sends like a pro.

Marron did fantastic.  You would never know she had a bad experience with her frisbee earlier in the day.  Right back to normal here at home.  I changed arms for the FC on 6 to 7 way too early and she actually wrapped 6 instead... good dog!  Keep that damn arm up and don't rotate too early silly handler!  And I didn't carry her frisbee on me as a lure either.  I played with her for a minute, put the frisbee on the porch, then ran to the start.  Forgot my leash in the house though, so I didn't go through that whole part of the start line routine.  After what happened earlier though, I was just thankful she still wanted to play.

Now just what to do about this whole stressed out, dog aggression thing.  Advice appreciated.
 

Marron and I haven't gotten much sleep the past two nights and I nearly thought she was going to surgery today.  I bought some bones last week that I didn't like.  I prefer just the ends of the bones as the dogs tend to chew them off in a dust like form.  The shaft of the bones they tend to shatter and occassionally they vomit up the pieces, which gives me a heart attack each time as I realize "Thank goodness it came up and not down!"  But the feed store only had whole femur bones in a size appropriate for my guys, so I grudgingly bought two which I've been careful to monitor them and take away any shards.  Sunday I finally went back to the store and they had the bones I wanted, so I came home and threw away the bad ones.  Sunday night though, Marron was doing these stretches that I know mean her belly hurts and she is going to wind up throwing up in the middle of the night.  She did and what was weird was that it was all food, whereas usually at that time of night when it happens it's just bile and foam.  She didn't feel too great Monday morning, but usually breakfast helps, so I fed her and when she didn't vomit, I felt maybe she was going to be ok, even though she was acting still sore (I now think she did puke while I was in the shower but Spy ate it.)  But last night she puked up her dinner again and she was definately not acting right.  I've actually never seen her so painful.  She doesn't like me to palpate her belly, but last night she was actually crying out when I did it.  Shaking and shivering... it was very sad to see.  She was also acting feverish- seeking out all the coldest spots in the house to lay (this from the dog who loves to be WARM!)  She couldn't even sleep for any length of time- she kept waking up and crying herself back to sleep, shaking the whole time.
So I took her in today, sure she was going to have a big chunk of bone sticking out like a beacon on the Xray.  I even warned the surgeon ahead of time that Marron was going to be coming her way.  But nothing was there.  Just a bunch of poop, even though she hasn't actually defecated since Sunday night when it all started and no signs of straining since.  I rectalled her and pulled out some of the poo and it was a little dry, but that could be from being a little dehydrated, and not the real cause.  It's kind of odd that there was that much poo and that she's made no effort to defecate.  So I'm just keeping her with no food or water and just pumped her full of subcutaneous fluids and gave her a dose of an anti-emetic.  I let her drink a few laps of water tonight and I'll start with some chicken and rice tomorrow, with more subcu fluids.  She's feeling lots better.  My boss even noted on my way out the door that she doesn't look like a foreign body (he hadn't seen her earlier).  She's very tired since she hasn't slept well in a while, and she's very offended that I'm feeding Spy and not her.

In the meantime, enjoy a little clip that I rustled up from the summer.  My video camera seems to have figured out how to talk to my computer again and this was what was still on the disc.
 

Just wrote that big long post, and completely forgot to add in the training notes from today.  Got back to the Backyard Dogs sequences.  I had been working mostly on 2x2 stuff with a couple of jumps, but I hate setting up and taking down, plus, as always, I such at making up my own stuff.  This month's stuff doesn't seem very hard, but it will be good to do real sequencing with Spy again since she's falling apart at class.  Bonnie's also given me homework of practicing switching her back and forth from obstacle to handler focus, and this month's article does seem to do just that.
Sequence 3 (I skipped 1 and 2 since they just seemed to be sequences found built into the rest of the sequences):

The important point was to get the dog into obstacle focus going towards the tunnels while completing the turns over the jumps.  I think I was pretty successful at this using a little lateral motion on the approach to the jumps and showing motion and acceleration towards the tunnel.  The spacing of these obstacles seem tight for a big dog.  I didn't really scale down anything, except that I have narrower jumps and a shorter tunnel to begin with, but it just seems like big dogs would be bouncing 3-4 and maybe 6-7, maybe wouldn't even make 6-7 based on the approach angle.  Easy for my guys- and made it easy for me to get them to commit to the second jump of the turn since it was right in front of their noses on landing.

Sequence 4:

This one had some good training issues for both dogs.  Marron had a very nice send to 3 right of the tunnel- very quickly zeroed in on the next obstacle.  Spy on the other hand tended to come to heel, before she would read my forward send.  She just didn't seem get into obstacle focus on the jumps if I was ahead and to the side of her.  She also knocked a bunch of bars in this section- why am I not surprised?  Marron had more trouble with the 6-7-8 part.  When she was in frisbee drive, she tended to go into too much obstacle focus, trying to find that magical one that will make me throw the frisbee.  While I much prefer this Marron to the careful, plodding Marron, it still made it hard to get her into handler focus here.  Despite showing outside (left) arm and turning my back on the OC jump in the center on her approach to 7, she still tended to take the OC jump and jump 4 on her way to the tunnel.  We worked on this a little bit and she started to stress about it.  Oy!  The delicate balance of training a soft dog!  Spy did not have that much trouble with this part, but I had already worked out the handler bugs by this point.  Maybe I over handled it with her, but given the difficulty she had with the first part, I didn't want to spend a great amount of time on the second part.

I will try to get some pictures of the new house this week.  It's a bit of a disaster still, but it's getting there.  Maybe some video too, but the video software was giving me trouble the last time I tried to use it, so we'll see if it's feeling better now.
 

We had a doctors' dinner last night, and since my parents' house is over an hour away a coworker offered to let me stay at her house for the night since we were likely to get out of the dinner really late.  No biggie right?  The girls are with my parents most of the day any way and will hardly notice when I don't actually come home.  If they do, they'll get over it.  Well, the front desk pages me today to tell me my dad called and I should call them before I leave work.  I don't worry too much about it.  They probably want me to pick something up on the way home.

So I check my cell phone and there's a voice mail from them.  Apparently, Marron got into one of the house plants, a philodendron, and has been puking and hiding all day long.  GEEZ!  That's not exactly something I would wait until almost 7 pm (when I would likely call them back) to tell me about!  Luckily, about the worst thing the philodendron does is act as an irritant, hence the vomiting and feeling like crud.  But still, they didn't know that!  What if the plant was way more toxic than that and needed IV fluids or something?  THEN I find out that she actually ate it YESTERDAY and has been feeling this way ever since.  That was totally worth a call last night, even if I was at a fancy dinner meeting!

I bring home some sucralfate for her.  We were out of Diarsynal, so she's just going to have to do without it.  I go to syringe her the sucralfate and her gums are dry and tacky.  Her skin tents up pretty bad.  The water bowl is empty, and when I filled it a few minutes later, my mom comments that she just filled it after dinner.  Great.  Then my mom tells me the full story.  They were outside when they noticed her eating a bunch of grass and then profusely vomitting.  They come inside, and then notice her going after the plant, as if using it like grass because of her already upset tummy.  So great.  She may have been vomitting before eating the plant.  Good thing I also thought to bring home a couple of needles for the bag of SQ fluids I have sitting around from when Wally got sick earlier this summer.  Really hope the bag didn't get contaminated in all that time.  Yay, a nice big abscess on top of her being sick.
 

Yeah, it poured.  But I didn't want to spend my entire day off on the couch (although I did still spend most of it there- it is football season after all) so I did take the girls out to work the last two sequences from the Backyard Dogs article.  They weren't too fond of the rain.  Marron ran a bit cautiously (until I tempted her with a frisbee when I saw that the footing wasn't actually too bad) and Spy was much more thoughtful than yesterday (but who knows if that was her responding to the wetness or just THINKING- imagine that!)

Sequence 9- Sending to jump 1 was different.  I wanted them to wrap around to the left since it set up a nicer line towards the tunnel.  But since this turned them away from the course and rather into some bushes, both really wanted to wrap to the right.  No problems with the weave entry.  Then my goal was to layer the weaves while sending laterally to 7.  Marron got it after just a few tries, but Spy took a little extra handling to get it.  I had to step in past the weaves and do more of a forward send, then step back and handle the weave entry like a recall.  Still worked, but wasn't how I wanted to do it.  I think if jump 6 wasn't right in front of more bushes I might have been more successful at cuing extension there which would carry them out better.  Both dogs knocked jump 9, but I forgave them for that since the footing was a little slippery with the rain.

Sequence 10- That evil weave entry off jump 3 again!  They got it faster today than yesterday though.  Oddly, I had to use lots of verbals to keep them in handler focus coming out of the weaves to get them into the second set, especially with Marron (I had the frisbee at this time and she tends to take off for whatever is in front of her out of the weaves when the frisbee is in my hand.)  I got lots of back jumping 2 and sends into the tunnel instead of the weaves.  Wrapping 6- pretty good, I even tried it as a backy-up a couple of times.  Sent to 8 and the tunnel, layered the weaves while the dog was in the tunnel so I was way ahead and cuing very strong extension for the final jump.

So much fun!  That's it for major training in my parents' yard.  During the week I've been working some 2x2 weave stuff to improve their entry work (we need it obviously).  The difference between Marron's understanding and Spy's is so obvious when I'm working with the 2x2's.  Marron was also taught with my own version of 2x2's way back when while Spy had difficulty with it, so I tried the "macaroni" method (see the When Pig's Fly article on weave poles) with her.  She's catching on, but at first when I introduced two gates she tried to weave the first poles of each gate rather than run straight through the channel they created.  I heard someone who tried to school their Corgi on channels had this problem- they expected the weaves to be in a straight line so weaved the poles that were in a line rather than take the easy, obvious path.
 

I only had to work til 4 yesterday, so I was able to come home and work the dogs some.  Of course the neighbor (who had all day to play outside) brought Pepper out to play while I was setting up my course.  I didn't dare take the dogs out to work until they went inside, even though they were playing in the front yard out of sight of our working area.  I could still hear the THUD as they kicked the deflated kick ball for her and her tags jingling as she chased after it.  And Pepper would certainly have heard Marron barking or me praising them and would have come down to investigate.  Hence, part of our workout was in the dark, but I still think it was at least a little productive.

Backyard Dogs again.  Marron was a good dog- great attitude yet again.  Even with the tough weave entries that she kept missing, she kept trying and working hard.  Spy was acting weird.  She was a little over the top, very hair trigger, easily pulling off obstacles, frantic, and breaking start lines.  Although her speed and enthusiasm were great, she wasn't really THINKING very much about what I was asking.  At one point I even put the jumps up to 12" (had been working 8") just to slow her down and make her think about what she was doing.  She didn't have any issues knocking bars really (even when it got dark!) so I was pleased with that much but gosh she can be frustrating sometimes!

Sequence 7- No problem with the lead out to pole 4-5 of the weaves.  I think both dogs refused jump 3 at least once, so I probably wasn't supporting it quite well enough.  I really had to work with Spy on getting her to wrap that jump tightly.  She has the capability to turn much tighter than Marron can, so I push her in this respect a little more.  Both handled the rear cross into the second set of weaves fine, though I do think it took Marron two tries to get it.  The closing was fine except for Spy being weird and pulling off the tunnel a couple of times. 

Sequence 8- Yeah, this one was challenging.  Keep the dog on the left throughout and all the pushes out of the poles.  Both had nice entries into the weaves at the first set which was basically a recall with me waiting at the end.  The tough part was not crossing too soon and pulling them out of the weaves, or pushing too late and having a crash or a wide turn out of the weaves and a poor approach to 4.  Sure, they should be able to finish the weaves no matter what I'm doing, but there is a limit on what you can expect them to ignore (like a clear, strong push on the exit).  So yeah, it was a big timing thing for me.  And with Spy being so hair trigger, she was especially a challenge.  I was constantly either too early or too late.  Marron I could cross a little early on and wait if I had to, but the baby dog wasn't that forgiving.  Then both had issues with the second weave entry.  Marron wouldn't carry on far enough and entered at pole 3 or 4, and Spy tried to overcompensate and go all the way around pole 1 to enter on the wrong side.  At least she kind of got the idea of finding that first pole.  Timing was critical again on the cross/push to get 7, especially because I kept having to watch carefully to see if they got the entry, which messed up my timing for the push.  With Spy it was especially ugly and we ended up with a few tandem turns/ rear crosses.  She even once thought I was trying to get her back in the other set of weaves.  Yeah, I'm not very good with pushes.

Today I'm off again, but it's raining so I'm not sure I'll be able to get the dogs out.  This is the last weekend where I'll be at my parents' house.  Moving in next weekend and I won't have to worry about Pepper any more!