Well what a busy day I had yesterday!  I didn't get home from dog training until nearly 11 at night, so had no time left to update my blog!

Matt took the dogs out to Horbling nature reserve for me yesterday, as I was out and busy with other things.  

Indie had a private heelwork to music lesson yesterday.. which could have gone better!  I had been very prepared, wrote up my routine (well, I had completed about 2/3 of it) on paper etc. and had been practising it lots in the morning.  Indie pretty much switched off as soon as we got into the barn and just played stupid.  "Paw????? Wha..?  What's that mean?"  She managed to get a little bit of work done but I was very disappointed and I don't think it bodes well for the competition we are entering.  It is so difficult and frustrating.  I know she is improving, and I know I have the patience and motivation to get us past this, but it's just whether that will be in time for the competition!  She is too easily distracted!

Then there was the Gold/Platinum class, and Trent was on his absolute best behaviour.  He was absolutely smashing and I was chuffed to bits with him!

The lesson started with a bit of a test to see how our dogs would respond to commands on either voice alone (hands behind your back!) or hand signals alone.  It was very interesting and I found out a couple of things.  I hadn't realised that Trent would do heelwork with my hands behind my back!   Trent will not walk back on hand signal alone, but he would on voice alone and he would not stand on his back legs by voice alone, but he would on hand signal alone.  Everything else, he would do with either.  

We also started a bit of competitive obedience send aways and a sort of '101 things to do with a pole'!

I taught Trent a new command, "wrap", where he will sit and wrap both his front paws around a pole and hold it!  It's so cute, I love it!  He's such a clever boy and he loves training.  You can almost see the cogs going round in his head when he's training, trying to figure out what I want!

Ash was excellent as usual in agility, but it was worked out that he actually performs better if I just shut my mouth for the majority of the course LOL!  He has developed an obsession with the stalls in the barn, because I used to throw food treats over the top to make being in the stall a nice experience for him and to keep him quiet.  When he entered the barn last night, the first thing he did was run full speed into one of the stalls.  It's getting a bit irritating now though as we will run a course, then he will run back and try to get into his stall again!  I refused to throw any treats over into the stall last night, and we did have the odd indignant yap, but I would rather break this habit now!