Friday's challenge

Obedience outside this week. Errmm interesting. The field outside the hall is used by a lot of villagers to walk their dogs, and I'm pretty sure there had been a bitch in season there as even the advanced entire dogs were very distracted. Needless to say Pip was very interested in smelling and not much interested in working!

I got him to play in the end, but he was totally refusing food. This was interesting as usually if he is training he gets no bowl fed food, only treats when training (his kibble with a bit of chicken mixed in) He would usually gget about half his usual breakfast ration in the morning as rewards, then be hungry (Pip style) for food when training in the evening. This week however he had had a full bowl fed breakfast, and I had then done some crate training at lunchtime, so he wasnt hungry in the evening. Not hungry Pip = no interest in treats at all.

TO be fair to him he was insecure in the environment and there were more dogs than usual training, inc Sarah and Alana. Sarah is lovely but has her own style... Lots of high pitched squeaking and then hard shouts (DOWN) Pip finds her quite worrying although he likes her well enough to say hello to.

Anyway heel work was a bit of a dead loss, so we broke off and ran some circles which oddly he was much happier with.

Carol is lovely and when he gets distracted she just tells me to do my own thing (he is the only puppy in the class with much older dogs) so we did some stand waits - he excells at these and even did perfect immobility in that environment. then did a bit more (slightly less distracted) heel work and some distance control. He seemed to find small tasks like distance cue work easy as its almost ingrained. So lots of hand touches too.

Did one perfect recall, and the 2nd one he came and kept going past to sniff again.

Finished with a lovely down wait and called it a day.

I was pleased that he managed to get through the worry and distraction and work for me, a few months ago he would have just been barking and far too worried to work.

It also proved that I do need him HUNGRY when we go to train or his desire for treats is so small as to be non existant.