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.