Jedi's 6:00 alarm went off without fail this morning, but I managed to ignore him until 8:00 again. At that point I figured we should get up because the plan was to leave around 9:00 to go back up to Menomonie to play at The Dog Tank again. The original plan was to meet a friend there and have a mini play date in addition to jumping, but something came up and they couldn't make it. It was looking pretty gloomy outside and when I checked the weather the radar wasn't looking so great. I elected to put off the drive north until the storms had passed and the radar looked a bit better at our destination.
Since I had some time to kill, I took Jedi downstairs for breakfast and we worked on the skill of holding something in his mouth. I used one of his chew toys and Jedi seemed to figure out what I wanted him to do right away. The training we did to hold the leash in his mouth no doubt transferred easily to this new object. The only real hiccup we experienced was that Jedi seemed positive that I wanted him to not only hold the rubber bone in his mouth, but also to back onto the large balance disc. While I appreciate his creativity, all I wanted was for him to sit in one spot and hold the object. I moved him further away from the disc and started the exercise from a sit instead of having him pick up the object himself. I thought his duration on the hold was pretty impressive, but he moves his head all over the place right now. We ended with some mini handstands by asking for Jedi to back up onto the balance disc propped against the wall.
I kept an eye on the radar all morning and we finally left for Menomonie a little after noon. Jedi didn't get lunch before we left because I didn't think he should get that worked up on a full stomach. I packed his food along and figured I could always give it to him before we left for home. It was raining when we left home, but we eventually drove out of it and hit sunshine. The temperature also continued to rise as we drove north. It was about 70 when we left home, but about 76 when we arrived at The Dog Tank. Considering how the day started, the weather ended up being quite nice for playing outside.
Perhaps because the weather kept most people away this morning, we ended up sharing the time with quite a few people today. Last time we went it was pretty nice because we were only sharing the dock with one other pair that swam at the same time. This meant we swam, we waited for that pair, then we swam again. Today Jedi really had his patience tested. Oh who am I kidding, he has no patience. Jedi pretty much barked/screamed from the moment we arrived to the moment we left. The only exception was when he was on the dock, and then he's too busy shaking with excitement to bark.
I elected to jump Secret and Jedi together for our first turn just to get them both in the pool. They both jumped right in, but Jedi did have a slight pause at the edge on his first jump. After that he did great. For subsequent turns I brought each of them up individually to better represent the experience they would have at a diving competition and so that I could give them my full focus. My main goal with Jedi was to start increasing the distance he was able to hold his wait on the dock to give him more space to build up speed. It was very hard to hold his stay on the dock, but we kept working on it and the added distance paid off in his jumps. Jedi had a big improvement in distance this week compared to last!
We ended up sticking around for two hours. In that time the dogs got the shared swim, two individual jump sessions each, and then a quick dual swim to give them each one more shot (more important for Jedi, who had been waiting in the crate during Secret's last turn). Jedi still needs more work at coming up the exit ramp on his own, but much like our experience at the beach he's figuring out that if I come towards his collar he needs to get his butt up there. We'll keep working on this in all locations. I'd rather not have to go two notches down the ramp to retrieve my dog at the competition, but we have time to get better about this. At least once I get Jedi up the ramp he knows he has to go back through the gate to jump again, so he has stopped turning around to go straight down the ramp again.
I had the dogs chase frisbees briefly to do a quick blow-dry before we left for home. Jedi had a super quiet ride home. I'm pretty sure the two hours of nonstop barking tired him out a bit. That should be a fun weekend in August where we spend two full days at the pool... I hadn't fed Jedi before we left the pool, so he ended up getting his "lunch" at 5:30 when we got home. We just went out into the yard and did some heeling, tried for more of those backward figure eights, and did a few teeter slams (haven't done those in ages). I had to mow the front lawn, so I got that done and then Jedi just got dinner out of a bowl tonight since I have a lot of homework I need to get to (but blog posts are more important, you know).
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