Disclaimer

This is a personal weblog based on my life with Bernese Mountain Dogs. The opinions expressed here represent my own and and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of any clubs, organizations or committees that I may be associated with. Please feel free to comment on any post, but profane, abusive or rude comments will not be tolerated - please be polite, even if you disagree.
All photos and posts in this blog are the property of the blog author and may not be used without direct consent.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Obedience Class

Last night Maggie and I were at our "getting ready to compete" obedience class.  We did lots of heeling patterns and Amanda taped us so that we could better see what we need to change in our body language and footwork.  From last night's session this is what I learned I need to work on:

1) Ready, Set, Go!   Maggie is a nice heeler, but it takes her about half the pattern to "get into          it"; before that she lags a little off the start.  We need to work on getting her upbeat and              ready so that when the judge says "forward" and I give her the signal, she is ready to go and        excited.
2) My shoulders.  I have a tendency to pull my left shoulder back when we are heeling.  This            pushes Maggie back and she lags.  I think I have developed this habit because I like to look          at my dogs when I am heeling.  I need to concentrate on keeping my shoulders straighter.
3)  Figure 8.  Walk fast, keep the circles tight and really push through the "outside" portion of         the figure 8 otherwise Maggie lags behind a bit and loses some of her spunk.

We also worked on getting straight fronts.  This is something that Maggie has been struggling with for a while.  Maggie has trouble finding "front" if I am not directly in front of her.  So I set myself up at an angle and made her find front.  She tried hard to figure out what I wanted and eventually started to catch on.  We really need to work hard on her finding front from any position and ending up in a nice, straight sit.

The dogs got to practice some fun recalls, which gave them a break from all the "thinking" work they had to do in class.

At the end of class Maggie and Tate got to have some fun playtime.  Maggie officially loves Tate and thinks he is quite handsome -he is a tri-colour boy  ;-)


1 comment:

  1. my owner like to look at me while i'm heeling too. although i didn't lag, but she know this shld not be the way, we might get penalize for that in trial. but it seems like that's d only way to keep my head up, or else, i might be looking elsewhere

    u looks like a having a great time playing and pouncing with tate at the end of your class... i did this too, but usually at the beginning of the class, coz owner said she wan me to get a little tired b4 d class start, or else, i might act zoomie...

    ReplyDelete