Fogged in but still flying

14/10/08

There hasn’t been much training happening in the last week. This was due to my “doing too much” emotional fallout and climbing pollen count.

I felt ill with hay-fever today, but at least Amika seems to be doing well on the Telfast. Less draggy and “slow” than on Polaramine. Still fighting the itchy skin, but hanging in there. I decided to “go anyway” today, despite feeling like I have a bad cold.

There was a fair amount of whining on the way in, but did get a response when I sternly told her to shut up. Not CU or +R but it works. There was a car at one side of our spot. It had two dogs with it. At first I thought I’d turn around. Then I thought I’d try LAT. Dogs at a distance, right? The silly girl didn’t even look in the right direction. I gotta clean that side window… Fortunately, they were just leaving, so we did have the place to ourselves.

I’ve had a bee in my bonnet about running with Amika the past week or two. Thus I went straight for the tracking line. I got no response for whiplash turns and there was a lot of sniffing. My ability to remember what I was supposed to be doing was not good. We sniffed over to her mat, did very little running but I think she had fun. She was close to OT / high but was able to chill a bit on the mat. In all this I was rewarding for re-orients with food and sometimes toys. Finished up with a jog to the car in which she stayed close to my side and reoriented fairly often. That was cool.

At home, Amika has been getting better at giving toys during fetch games. I have been working on heel position, though haven’t got a cue on it yet. Also realised the other day that she thinks she can take her sweet time responding. I need to start doing “mouse went down the hole” stuff. I got that phrase from a bird training discussion. When training hawks (or any animal) food is on offer for a short window of opportunity. In the wild if they wait too long, that mouse goes down the hole: end of opportunity.