Jedi has been a busy boy since I last posted on Thursday. We spent Friday and Saturday at an AKC trial at Canine Sports Zone. Yesterday I elected to keep us at home for a change. It was a beautiful day and it was tempting to drive up to the Dog Tank for some diving fun, but we stayed home and worked on some rear cross skills instead. I'm between class sessions right now and didn't have to teach, so tonight we did some more training. I've gotten pretty slack on training much of anything lately, so I figured we were due!
Jedi did well at the trial, but he was a bit barky on Saturday. We really only had an issue when I was walking away with 2 or 3 of the dogs without him, and he stopped once we were out of view. A couple of times, though, I came back and someone had placed Kizzy's screen in front of Jedi's crate, so that tells me he was annoying enough that people tried to stop him. After that I started to make a point to just move the screen in front of Jedi's crate whenever I took at 2 others outside without him. He did better on Saturday. Speaking of crating, though, it would appear that Jedi is outgrowing his 30" crate. I might have to figure out a new configuration for us -- either putting the Klee Kai into the 30" crate or packing up Jedi's 36" from the living room and schlepping it along to trials.
I'm sticking to my "no fetching" rule for Jedi for a while. This meant no fun running in the field across the street from CSZ this weekend. He still got to come out of his crate to play, though. In addition to taking him to chill out by my chair next to the ring (and by chill out I mean tug like a crazy fool) I also made sure to take him in the turf area to play. We also managed to get some time on the practice jumps during course builds when they weren't being used by entered dogs. Jedi got his second session of rear cross training on these jumps and he was pretty much a rock star. Have I mentioned lately how awesome his focus is? Coming off Kizzy as my last training project (ongoing...), it's nice to be able to have a dog who can work off leash in that environment without concern. I didn't bother to measure Jedi this weekend since we just did that at the last trial.
Yesterday morning while we were being lazy in bed (I was totally okay that I only got into 2 days of the trial) I noticed that Jedi's retained canine was obviously loose. I probably could have popped it out right there if I tried hard enough, but I thought the odds were good that it would come out the next time we played. Jedi was pretty pushy and active after breakfast, so I finally relented sometime after 10:00 and took him outside to play. I added a second jump to his rear cross training to teach him that we don't just do rear cross wraps -- that there is usually another jump to go out to. He picked it up very quickly. I started with two hoops next to each other at a 90-degree angle and pushed them out pretty quickly since he seemed to get it. When we got in the house after, sure enough the tooth was gone! It would have been nice to keep that one with the others, but oh well, I wasn't going to go dig in the grass.
Jedi had a very quiet day while I worked from home today, so I figured I'd make him happy and set up a little training drill tonight. We continued to work on the rear cross and incorporated it into some sequences. By George, I think he's got it! :o) I'll be the first to admit that Jedi needs some work when it comes to driving the correct line and going through obstacles instead of around them, but he's had very little exposure to hoops so far and he's been asked to go every which way around wings and cones, so who can blame him? That is the least of my worries at the moment, but I am tickled with his ability to read my rear cross cues as well as he is at this point. Additionally, Jedi has absolutely no problems rear crossing into a curved tunnel and drives just as nicely as he does when I'm on the inside. Honestly, after what I went through with Kizzy it's a relief!
After we wrapped up our play time with sequencing I decided to get Jedi's latest "trick" on video. Not too long ago I asked him to jump up into my arms on a whim when we were in the house and to my surprise he actually did it! Pretty much entirely on his own! Since then I've randomly asked a couple of times and he seems to get it, so I thought I'd put it on film tonight. He was a little pooped after all of his running (the video I posted is edited down from 15 minutes, but all I edited out was playing and when he went to dive into the pool, so there is a lot of playing). This meant he didn't have a lot of oomph for jumping up, but he still gave it a good go. He's definitely not put off by it, that's for sure!Tomorrow night is agility class and then Wednesday night we drive over to the state fair. I'm still planning to smuggle Jedi in (I got Kizzy in as an extra a couple of years ago) with the hope that he can play in the pool.
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