I should have known something would go wrong at some point! Dylan has been so good and so consistent with his contacts until now that I should have been suspicious, nothing is ever that easy.<\/p>\n
At the weekend at EMDAC he was playing in the practise ring with me and he was abruptly very slow and stalky on the downplank of his Aframe and Dogwalk. I did think it might have been the rain; he’s a cautious boy and he hasn’t worked on equipment in the rain before, so it was a bit more slippy than he’s used to. But at training again on Tuesday he was still creeping!<\/p>\n
I’ll admit I’m stumped. Kim has never been a creepy creepy dog. Kim’s style was always to launch herself wildly from the highest point, which presents whole other training challenges. Mollie’s style is just to run and hope that eventually you give her a ball, which sometimes includes the reckless leaping but mostly just involves running. So Dylan’s creepiness is a new one for me, and I’m not sure what to do. He is hitting his 2o2o perfectly, and I don’t know how to reward the 2o2o without rewarding the creeping.<\/p>\n
We tried a variety of things at training. I tried throwing the toy as he was coming down the downplank, which slowed him down. Great proofing for the contact though! I tried having someone calling him down, which kind of worked but not really because he was looking to me for direction and pretty much ignoring the other person. Again, great that he isn’t getting distracted by the person shouting him but not so great with the creeping, which didn’t go away. I also tried playing tuggy with him on the contact, which did speed up the creeping but it was still creeping, which I’m not happy about.<\/p>\n