Goals for Sophie in 2015:
- Earn her FMCH (Flyball Master Champion) 15,000 points. She needs 1,152 points -Successfully accomplished in March! Wohoo!
- Earn her CGC - this has been on the horizon for numerous years. I always hesitated due to her leash reactivity but she has made amazing progress and I think we maybe ready --> Actually forgot this was on our list for this year...oops
- Finish her CAT title (Coursing Ability Title) - Accomplished! She definitely got the hang of it by her third leg and had a blast. We may do more events just because she really seems to like chasing the baggie lol
- Try out barn hunt - I think she will excel at this and as she gets older, I would like to start looking into events that are less taxing on her physically --> We have been taking classes since May and she loves it! We had our first trial a few weekends ago. No qs, but we had a lot of fun. Now just to work on generalizing and confidence in new settings.
Swyatt:
- Work on a solid stay - he has a good stay in his crate, usually waits to be released. But we need to
get him to hold that stay in other settings. Specifically at agility practice. --> Still a work in progress. But doing so much better!
- Work on recall in distractions - he goes off leash hiking with the daycare and does great. I am not quite ready to let him loose when we hike. --> Always going to be one of those things we work on but he has made great progress. We are no working off leash in agility class and flyball practice. He has been doing great recalling and working.
- Introduce wall work and have a swimmers turn on the box - a biggie because given his size, I want to train a clean, tight swimmers turn --> Since we have seen a lot of maturing and focus on his part, we have just begun this work this past weekend. At the beginning of practice he was slamming into the wall and really had no clue what we were asking and no idea he had back feet. By the end of practice (he is learning to work through things and think a lot) he was doing four feet on the wall turns with a quick snap off. His jumps were at about my shoulder height. It was awesome!
- side by side recalls - he has successfully done this a few times but we need to vary the dogs and practice it more Some days this goes really well....a few demos and practices where he rocked this. And then this past weekend, he successfully completed three runs and then chased the border collie in the neighboring lane. Work in progress!
- Progress with his leash reactivity - this is more on me in that we need more training scenarios. I will admit, I have somewhat shied away from this. We have done several hike a bull hikes and he does well at those. But I haven't been as proactive at getting him out on walks in urban settings and working on his reactivity. But its time to do so. I was reminded recently of the progress Sophie has made and now it is time to focus on Swyatt making progress! --> we took a reactive dog class and have seen progress. He still has his moments where he gets way over threshold but he is getting much better and is able to focus more on me or a task and work through his meltdowns.
- graduate to being loose in the house when we aren't home - his previous anxiety about being left isn't evident anymore, he can stay alone for short periods. But now it is working on him not counter surfing. Only if the counters are completely empty and nothing else in the vicinity looks interesting. He also must be tired LOL. Slow going for sure!
Both of my labbies have made amazing progress this year. I am so happy with their progress and the adventures we have had. I am excited to start planning our next year together and to see what we shall do :-)
