My Boy

I really should be packing for this weekend now (we're leaving tomorrow right after work), but I have to at least take a minute and share how proud I am of Bentley.  We have been trying to build in some distance work in all of our training.  And our trainer has been really good about helping us find ways to run sequences and throw in some gamblers skills.

I have to say, he has improved so much!  Of course there are things that he is more likely to go out to than others (weave poles and the dogwalk!), but he is now willing to turn away from us, and his tunnel sends are better (though definitely his weak spot).

We have come so far from this video (taken over 2 years ago)...I was so excited because this is the first time that we were able to consistently send him out to a tunnel at this distance...



And now I believe we really have a chance!  Always a work in progress, but he has really shown us that he is willing and able.  What a good boy!

Backyard handling

I wanted to work on some handling with both dogs.  Lexi always needs work, especially on the  more technical stuff, and Bentley is rusty so I wanted to see where we stood.

Both dogs did well..though Bentley was a bit rusty (both his fault and ours!) as expected.

We set up this short sequence based on a steeplechase course that we ran back in August.

Here's the video of both dogs, alternating dogs and trying different handling.



Lexi is a few seconds (2-3) faster than Bentley.  But the interesting thing was that her run with the FC is much faster (2-3 seconds) than her run with the RC.  Definitely a reminder to keep moving.  Lateral motion really helps her get her job done.

Also, you can see our outtakes where we just couldn't figure out the timing for Bentley to commit to the jump with a RC.  Always a weakness of his, it's gotten worse since we've spent all this time running Lexi.

The other night Lexi got to work on gambles.  We rarely work that with her because her default is to work away and grab whatever...but it was her birthday so we let her choose ;)

Here she is doing a masters gamble from a course map that I had.  I thought it would be easy, but she really wanted to come out and take that jump across from the tunnel (jump 1) rather than make that turn.  We had to work on it!