Repetitions – 17th October 2009
Firstly I must apologise for not keeping this diary up to date over the last two weeks. A combination of very long working hours and my wife writing an assignment has meant that there has been no time to get on the PC. Worse than that, exercising the dogs has been, by and large, confined to local lead walks on the road. Not ideal. This, however, will be changing. My wife has finished her assignment and I won’t be working the same hours that I have done recently. This doesn’t mean that training will get any easier as the clocks change this weekend and we will have less light, but at least a few of the factors will be on my side.
Last weekend we had a training session on the racecourse. It wasn’t particularly eventful, but it was noticeable how compliant Grace was compared to normal, or at least the preceding two weeks. She was dropping to the whistle quickly, and turning and returning on the ‘p’ of the pip. I had her spayed after her first season but I still feel very strongly that her hormones change as if she wasn’t spayed. I am not sure how this could be, but I really feel there is something in it.
I let them both let off some steam before a rather systematic lesson of drops, recalls, hups and stays. As usual Grace whined incessantly when having to sit in one spot for longer than a second, but I found that by leaving them both in the hupped position and walking even further away than normal before recalling them I could actually get out of earshot, giving me some respite.
Both dogs did fine. I purposefully let Archie ‘get on’ when I knew he had spotted other dogs in the distance, then dropped him in full flight just to test how well he dropped. He dropped instantly. Great.
November 1, 2009 at 3:29 am
“As usual Grace whined incessantly when having to sit in one spot for longer than a second…”
Oh no! Penny does the same thing (I think)! We’ve started training (recall surprisingly good right now) – but the whining! All I can think to do is to keep her working (at sit, etc., as you implied), but if any other dogs are working within her sight she’s consistently vocal.
Also enjoyed seeing your fog. We’ve had similar weather this past month. A real surprise to us how hard she was to see and track!
Tonight is our trick-or-treat night; Penny’s first Halloween. So far so good – she’s having fun pointing at the door when the bell rings.
November 1, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Hi Susan – I hope halloween was fun! Yes, I have to say that the whining is actually something that I have given up on trying to correct. I managed to stop her doing it in the back of the land rover (she only ever whined when we had stopped, just before I let her out) and I managed to stop this using a water bottle – one squeak and she got a hefty jet of water. It only took a few days to stop this. Sitting while another dog is working is another story. It is constant and really drives me mad. Archie is such a contrast, lying by me feet and just taking the world in whilst he waits to be told to get on. Quite different. It would be tempting to use the water bottle when out on the moor, just to stop her whining when I pick her up, but I use the bottle to give both dogs water in the summer and don’t want her associating the bottle with any discomfort. I will have to use earplugs to save my sanity!
Nice to hear from you
Howard