Freestyle class and other stuff

First a side note. Thanks to , http://koovamyalovestory.blogspot.com/ ( I hope that is your link),"Painter Pack Mom" who sent me a note to my email about a sheltie in a Georgia animal shelter that was to be put to sleep on Jan. 20. He has now been pulled by Georgia Sheltie rescue. Yea!!

I tired to take Miley to the training field this morning but it just wasn't to be. I looked at the radar before I left and it didn't show any rain in the area yet. So I left my house around 8 am . Well I didn't get but half way there and it started pouring down rain. So much for that.

I did get to go to Guiness's freestyle class. A couple of new people showed up today. It's hard on the new people to come to class I think. Three of us have been going since the beginning, so the dogs know more than the people who joined the last class. It's not really that they know more, its just that they have the tricks down better. The dogs worked hard today. Some times she breaks the class up and a few people work at a time. But today everyone was working at the same time. When I finally looked at my watch it had already been 35 minutes. That's a long time for dogs to be doing tricks constantly. Usually I will take a break and take my dog outside but today it was pouring down rain at that time. So we kept working. One thing everyone needed to improve on was getting the treats out of our hands so the dog works without a lure or immediate reward. Some people could put their treats on a chair near where they work. But if you know Guiness, that's not going to work. He is food obsessed. So I had to go get my cooler and put that on the chair so he couldn't get the treats himself. We then worked on doing three and four tricks and then run to the treats. Its kinda like agility when you start sequencing and they get a treat at the end. With Miley I sometimes run several small courses and then we run in the house and gets some treats. That way its more like a trial, you don't get the treats right away. If you dont do that , the dog may thing they are doing something wrong because they arent getting a treat. Then they will stop working.
Guiness was defiantly over the whole thing by the time we finish. The last thing we did was make up a small routine to some music. Guiness wasn't to focused and I think it was just to much for him. I'm going to have to do a better job with giving him breaks. He came home and went to sleep.
It finally stopped raining around 4 pm so I was able to take the dogs to the park and walk them about 1 hour before it got dark. Yea!!