Yesterday, Katie was perfect! No mistakes. I definitely needed that. We were working at the training building prior to the greyhound obedience class I teach. We did all of the utility and open exercises and she did great. Her articles have been much better. She seems to be so much more confident in that if she smells the right one first... she grabs it and goes. Before she seemed to have to narrow it down and check the other articles before deciding on the best pick. I much prefer her to be confident and quick to find it.Today she wasn't perfect, but she still worked really well. She has a bad habit in the signal exercise of walking several steps prior to laying down when I signal her. So basically she's standing at one end of the ring and I'm 40-50 feet away at the opposite end. I give her a hand signal and she is suppose to drop to a down, ideally in place. But she tends to take a few steps towards me and then lie down. Its passing, but you can lose a lot of points. So I've been placing a pole in front of her that forces her to lie down in place. Well, today I tried it without the pole and she looked as if I was talking to her in sign language (ok, bad joke since I sort am doing hand signals :-). So we will need to work without the pole. She dropped beautifully in place once she figured out what she is suppose to be doing, but obviously the pole had become part of the signal.
Photo - Here's Katie hoping a squirrel would fall out of the tree.... of course, the pesky muzzle would make a falling squirrel almost impossible to catch, but she would still like to try.
