There is a nice spot near our house where I used to work Brandy last
summer. It is a grassy area that is surrounded by the backyards of two
single family houses on one side and woods on other three. Great for
distractions as you can easily run into bunch of deers, fox, not to
mention squirrels or rabbits.
I think I stopped going there during all that snow that we got last
winter and then I just used to our new spot, but past Friday I finally
went back there.
As I mentioned last Friday we started having some biting issues during
retrieves. During our Saturday class Margot wanted demo to everyone
how to handle the it, but of course Brandy refused to provide an
opportunity, so I had to live with just instructions for the future.
As we were approaching the area, I saw the fox standing there, we were
kind of far and Brandy was too busy with picking the potty spot and I
guess smell didn't reach her yet.
By the time we hit the spot fox dissapeared by the smell was really
strong for her. Brandy was all trembling with the excitement . I
didn't want to waste any time , put her on the sit stay and tossed the
dumbbell. She was so consumed by the smell that not only she didn't
notice the command, but also didn't put up any fight during
correction, but one correction was sufficient. After that she was
quite frantic, but did the retrieves.
After 3 successful retrieves I let her to pick up the fox track and
follow it for a bit. When we reached the woods Brandy started
frantically running back left to right and right to left at the end of
a longe line, so I called her and we did few more retrieves. Retrieves
were fine but her fronts are almost non-existent on a good day, now I
had a real hard time getting her straight. Also tomorrow I will need
to remember to grub my throwchains with me as her recall under such a
strong distraction was really bad also.

Sent from my iPhone

Today I broke down and bought myself a small video camera so of course I wanted to play with it. Below are quick clips of Brandy doing a broad jump (40") and retrieve over the high jump. Right now the jump is 16" high, but I should be able to take it to full 20" by the end of the week.20" is what the final height will be.

one step forward two steps back

Tonight we went to our practice place at school. Our usual spot was taken by some people with dogs so I set myself a little bit further but not too far from them. They were a very good distraction for Brandy, but unfortunately they were a distraction for me too. I do not feel comfortable working in front of them, but I guess I need to get over it.
In addition Charlotte was very cranky and was driving me crazy, poor girl has a red swollen, itchy face and was really miserable, so I can hardly blame her for being that way. But this caused me to be kind of up tight and I am sure Brandy sensed it, plus we were short on time.
We went through jumping and then worked on heeling. Charlotte was calling the pattern, that made her a bit happier. We also worked on figure 8, both heeling and figure 8 were kind of bad, I guess partially because of the dogs and I am sure partially because of me.
We worked on retrieve on the flat, and once I had to correct Brandy - she threw a fight but we managed. Later I put out different items for her to retrieve as we didn't practice it for a while and everything went well but she blew me off on the last item - the metal spoon. When I tried to correct her she started growling and attempting to correct my hand. Here is my problem, I didnt feel comfortable taking care of the issue in front of those people as she starts screeching even before I touch her - such an actress, so after Brandy brought that spoon back I headed towards the near by trees away from their eyes. After a bit of a fight she brought the spoon back and we repeated it couple more times until it was clean. When we came home and I put Charlotte to bed, I picked up a small metal lock and asked her to fetch it, of course we did an introduction first, everything went well.

I pissed Brandy off this morning! We were working retrieve as the deer
was running in the near by woods, Brandy ignored me, I corrected her.
The other several attempts were good but the deer was long gone by
then, however I notice that distraction hangs in the air for a while
even if the cause of it had disappeared .
For some reason after that I have decided to work with my keys. I tossed them out and sent Brandy. When she arrived to the keys she started sniffing the ground around
them and then actually stepped away from them still sniffing the
ground. I jerked her back and made an attempt to deliver a correction.
As soon as I started working on the collar she strayed twisting and
hissing and trying to get away from me towards the keys, however I
was determined to make a correction this time. After a quick
correction she lunged forward and I let her, but as soon as she got to
the keys she started sniffing the ground again, so I jerked her back
and attempted to get the correction. This time she was screeching and
hissing even more and even made an attempt to get her teeth
onto me. This time we managed to get together almost to the keys,
when she managed to get away from me, she grabbed the keys and
delivered them to me. On the next retrieve everything went pretty
smooth. I did one or two more key retrieves, throwing them on top of
the old, dry pile of leaves and that went well also, so we stopped.
This evening before Anya's concert I stopped at home to for a few min, the weather was so good that I had to really restrain myself from working Brandy today, although I would not have had time anyway. Hopefully tomorrow I will have a chance. I was trying to chill or rather enjoy a bit of sun on the back yard, watching Brandy hopping around like a bunny. When she does that I wish we had a real yard and not a tiny bit, so she can enjoy chasing rabbits there. Brandy was standing in front of me mybe 6-8 feet away and I suddenly decided to give her a down command, I had no leash on her, but I was ready to step in and use the tab on her collar in case I would need a correction, to my great surprise the down came swiftly and she folded nicely back without any front movement. All that time I was trying to make her to do it and I was totally unsuccessful and here we go! Not sure how I will get it out of her again, she probably was standin naturally and nothing was stopping her from folding back. I guess I just keep on working on the stand and keep on doing what I was doing, so hopefully it will sink in eventually.
Today I was so bored at work! There is nothin worse than being stuck at work with nothing to do and knowing that at home I could be doing so many fun things, like training Brandy for example! I would have probably found a way to sneak out early and work her a little bit, but I think she really needed a day off and today was a good day for it.
I am thinking that I really would like to add pictures to the blog and I would like to start videotaping our sessions, I bet it would be very useful to go back an see things. I have a nice photo camera, I just can't bring myself to spend time uploading those pictures, I am really bad with getting pictures off the card.
Where the video camera is concerned I want to buy the flip camera (HD). they seem kind of neat, but I need to save money. My allowance is $40 a week and the camera on amazon is $160, it will take me all summer to save for one, and then it will be too cold for me to go out to do something like this. Too bad I didn't think about before mothers day:-( Now I need to worry about Alex's birthday and fathers day instead of my camera. Oh well, I guess I should suck it up and use the one we have, althouh it will require a tape and not as small as the flip one.

This morning I decided to change our location for retrieve and moved to our old place by the woods in hope for more distractions. I am not really happy with the retrieve as Brandy seems kind of slow. When we were going back, the dog showed up in the nearby backyard and started barking at us, so I took the opportunity to make another attempt on the retrieve, unfortunately by the time we got closer to the fence, maybe 40 feet away, the dog disappeared into the house. However Brandy was still distracted and slightest hesitation on her end provided me with an opportunity for correction. The next attempt was much faster.
This afternoon I decided to work on the jumps and other stuff near the house. Surprise again, couple kids playing nearby and a guy cleaning his car provided for enough distractions to make it interesting. In addition we caught a glimpse of the poodle and another neighbor walking a rat-dog during the broad jump, that was nice.
After jumps I decided to do some heeling with halts alone the fence line of the single family houses. One of the yards had another small yuppie dog that decided to bark at us. After few more halts I decided to work on downs as I had such a great distraction and then I remembered about the retrieve, the opportunity seemed perfect, but my dumbbell was left by the jumps. When I came back with the dumbbell, I found that the dog was locked in the house - damn it! No luck with the retrieve and barking dogs situation, next time I should remember to grab the dumbbell with me:-(
After we came back to the jumps we worked a bit on about turns and heeling. I noticed during Monday's run through that I am taking a large step after about turn, forcing the correction, so I decided to try taking a much smaller first step that is made by my left foot as last part of the about turn and it worked much better, I think.
Brandy was jumping 12" yesterday and today and we made 20 jumps, so I wanted to try making it to 14" before we leave, I know I know, I am impatient, but I wanted to give it a try. I noticed that Brandy was brushing the jump on the way out, she wasn't hitting it with her legs but something was touching it to make a soft sound, but on the way back she was clearing it just fine. I thought that the problem might be the fact that I am too close to the jump so I moved a little bit back, but it didn't help. I decided to stop after the two tries, maybe she is too tired as we were jumping for a while although we were taking short breaks in between, I'll try again on Friday and we'll see how it goes.