Packed up "the boys" (Jessie the Kerry Blue Terrier and Bailey the shih tzu) and took them to Delaware for a Connie Cleveland Seminar. What a great experience!
Connie spent a lot of time working with me on Bailey's shyness issues and gave me some marching orders with him. He has to come everywhere with me and just play. I'm going to take him to all of the trials, not enter him, and just play with him until he relaxes and views new places as fun places to be. I think this will help him a great deal. I didn't want to show him while I was showing Jessie for his UDX anyway. Two sets of Open stays at a trial is too much for me. When Jessie is done with his UDX, I'll just show him in Utility and start to show Bailey in Open. Hopefully by then he'll be a pro at Utility too and will go straight into that class as well. Then if I want I can put Jessie back in Open.
I'm also going to switch Bailey for the turn and sit on the scent articles to a flying send. This should increase his drive out to the articles and hopefully make him more upbeat while working on them. I can always switch him back if he goes too wide or it doesn't seem to working. She said she always starts with the flying send and only later switches to the pivot sit and send. She also has a neat way to teach the flying send where you slowly turn away from the article pile, but don't actually turn with the dog, but after the dog, to encourage the dog to really hug tight around as the go for the articles.
For Jessie we worked on stays - but there was nothing new. Just the same old suggestions for fixing them. I guess I'm sunk with that one. No one seems to know how to fix or maintain stays. She also worked with me a little on the moving stand, which was good in a way since I saw the depth of the problem, but once again, nothing really new.
I guess nothing new isn't a bad thing. Mostly I think I'm on track, I just get a little lazy. I need to use the guides for go-outs more, and I'm going to have someone tug him on a long line on the go-outs. I want to introduce the idea of guides to Bailey as well, since I do think they work, I just forget to use them.
I've only got two more weeks before my first show of the year. I now don't feel like I'm ready, but then I guess I never feel that way. Hopefully I'll do better then I think I'm going to do.
Posted by enoj
at 12:56 PM EST
