Obedience Lesson

This afternoon, Bosley and I had an Obedience Lesson with Amanda to start to work more seriously on some Open Obedience stuff. 

Heeling:  The biggest thing that I have been working on at home is randomizing rewards and not always having food rewards on me.  I carried that over to today's lesson, and it seemed to work.  Bosley was still heeling nice, although I didn't have food in my pocket.  He also didn't try to run and get the food stashes or didn't stare at the spots the food were hidden in.  He did lag on the first few steps of heeling, so we worked lots on set-up games instead of full heeling sequences.

Drop on Recall:  We worked some fun drop in motion stuff and then drop from a stand.  We need to work lots on fast drops with no creeping forward.  

Broad Jump:  We started the beginning of the Broad Jump exercise today by just sending Bosley over the jump and out to a target plate.  Bosley needs to learn to get some height going over the the broad jump, so I will practice at home with a jump bar over the broad jump.

Dumbbell:  We worked on straight fronts by placing the dumbbell off center from where Bosley and I were set up.  He did pretty good with this, but sometimes rocks back on his sit (which I don't like).  I wish he would be closer when he comes to front with his dumbbell, but Amanda said his distance from me is fine.  I also really want him to drive out to get the dumbbell - he sometimes does not go out on my first command, like he is unsure if he should get it or not.  Maybe that is because I have just began to ask him for a formal "wait" command before sending him out.  Up until recently, I have been keeping him excited by holding his collar and then sending him.

We got a lot of work in today, and I was very happy with how the lesson went.  I have lots of stuff to work on and I even made notes in Bosley's notebook so I can start to keep track of where we are in our training.

*** Thanks to Wendy for the awesome pictures.  These were taken last weekend at the park where a few of us met to work on obedience and visit.