Dylan – More Training
As the weather has finally cheered up, I’ve been able to do a bit more training out and about with Dylan. I can carry a couple of jumps across the road into the woods, which isn’t perfect but it has lots of distractions and the ground is nice, so it’s good for training. Unfortunately there isn’t much room (due to all those trees!), and although I could probably fit three or four jumps, at the moment I’m taking two and setting them fairly widely spaced.
We didn’t get much done on Friday because I went out at around 3pm, and of course I attracted a bit of an audience from the local kids. We only had chance to do a couple of exercises before we became the entertainment, and so I gave up pretty much straight away with Dylan. He doesn’t get the opportunity to be around small children very often (most of the lads were around 9 or 10, I think) and he finds them a bit scary. From past experience I also know that some of the children will try and join in, or throw sticks or toys for the dog I’m with, which obviously isn’t ideal for me trying to train poor Dyl. I did let him go around and meet people though, and after a couple of run-away moments he let a few of them pet him. After that I swapped him for Kim and she showed them how it should be done, and then we went home.
Today it was a bit quieter, being a Sunday, and we got some exercises done in relative peace. We did some left and right turns onto different angled jumps, and I have to admit I was really pleased. Dylan was really picking up on what the next obstacle was going to be, and on the odd occasion when he knocked a pole, he was still running through the wings (and occasionally jumping when he hadn’t realised the pole had gone down, which (apart from being quite funny), just goes to show he understands what he supposed to do!). He’s also a lot more confident now, and just from what we did today I know I’m going to have to work on rear-crosses as he’s constantly watching for me, and that will be where the poles come down,
Hopefully on either this week or the week after Dylan will be starting to do some basic chase training for flyball, along with Biba the Beardie babe and SuperChip the lunatic Lurcher. I already know he’s ball-obsessed so at least that won’t be a problem!
Finally, Dylan would like to send some big kisses to his many girlfriends – Jet, for becoming an official BFA Flyball Dog, and to his new girl Meg for winning into Grade 3 under KC rules with her third jumping win.