Saturday, August 18, 2007
What's up, Saturday?
This is a new (to us) butterfly on the lantana bush. We will identify it and add it to our lifetime butterfly list. Isn't it pretty? Mike caught a number of great pictures of it.
In case you've ever wondered what goes on in an obedience lesson, today we had a little serendipity in the form of a couple of folks who were watching our lesson. Their dogs were crated next to them as they watched. The two students agreeably took a few pictures, then my teacher (in the green shirt) took a couple of pictures of us heeling.
First, we talk about what Rowdy and I have been doing in our training since our last lesson a month ago and decided what we needed to work on today. I learned more about how to walk and stop. Heeling is tremendously difficult - if you want to do it well. I spend a lot of time learning to walk in a VERY straight line, learning to move my feet, body and eyes in a way that gives Rowdy the information he needs, and then learning to make this contrived form of walking look very natural. And Rowdy spends a lot of time being fascinated by this cool and complicated system of teamwork. He has his own set of complexities to think about and manage in this dance of precision heeling. Think of it as a competitive Tango with your dog.
Where's the leash? Well, we train off-leash. Don't need it; it just gets in the way.
Next we worked on perfecting Rowdy's understanding of where to put his fuzzy butt when he sits in heel position. He tends to swing it out enough to cost us a small deduction in points.
Then we practiced our heeling in an informal Figure 8 pattern. Rowdy heels in a very nice, head-up style. You can see he is interested in what we're doing. When I get the pace right, he prances along, matching my pace, keeping his body perfectly parallel to my direction of travel - even through changes of direction and speed, and his shoulder-to-nose aligned with my left pants seam. Like I said, a Tango. Before too much longer, we'll do this in a show ring.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment