Funny Spry

She lost her MIND at class last night. She was pushy - pushing her start line stays, blew a DW contact (1st time I think EVER quite honestly), almost flew off the teeter, etc. She also fell off the DW - she was fine, just being a looney. She fell off the up-ramp, right where the tunnel went under the DW. So she kind of jumped off onto the tunnel then onto the ground. Then without even a hesitation, she jumped back onto the tunnel and put three paws on the DW, facing the direction she had originally been travelling, and looked at me like "is this ok?" I just said "walk it!" and she put the fourth paw on and took off! I guess she figured she ought to fix the mistake where she made it? Never realized before the tunnel was a way to get on/off the DW? Who knows but it made total sense in her little brain!

Latent Learning

Ok so apparently Spry is a latent learner!!!

Last Weds I used her for demo to show how we teach jumping, and it was her first time seeing a jump. Well, being asked to do anything with it. There has often been jumps at 8 or 12 at the building that she could have easily hopped over, but she's never even considered going between teh uprights before. And last week she sure didn't seem to get what I was asking what with all the attempts at 1RTO!

Well Tues when I was practicing, I let her out of her crate, she runs out onto the floor, jumps a 12" jump perfectly, and turns to look at me like "Hey mom, I thought about it, and I'm pretty sure this is what you wanted last time!!! How bout it?" She is really, just too adorable for words sometimes.

Funny Spry

So last night we had night 2 of instructor training for BRAG instructors. I was explaining and demo-ing how we teach jumping to our beginner students. I decided to use Spry to demo, thinking she'd be perfect because she has not started jump training yet, so it would be realistic and we'd see some of the problems students encounter when they start jumping.

So, I'm sitting next to the jump with Spry, and she quickly gets that she's supposed to go back and forth over the low bar. She is knocking it a lot though - she's like slowly stepping over the bar and it *looks* like she's trying to gingerly put her rear foot over the bar but just hitting it instead. And it hits me. No, my dog is trying to do 1RTO on the JUMP BAR. She was putting 3 feet on the landing side and very carefully trying to put the 4th foot on the jump bar. And of course it then fell. Haha silly girl!! I'm not really planning on training her to jump for a few months, but we may have to work past this issue when we do!! I imagine though that when she is older and I'm more comfortable with her actually jumping, raising the bar will get us the "jump" I need and she won't be so tempted to try 1RTO.