Lessons and other things

Here is the course that Meagan set up tonight. Its from memory to the best of my ability. I don't know why I cant remember to bring my notebook with me. What is up with that. The lesson went really quickly and I couldn't believe it was over. I felt like we hadn't done anything but I knew we had. So I'm not sure why I felt that way. Miley wasn't tired at all. And she wouldn't come to me at the end. She hasn't done that in months. I finally had to use my emergency word to get her to come to me. That word is "back". This word makes her crazy because I use it to train Guiness. And every time I say it, she come tearing over barking at me. ( jealous?) . It worked like a charm tonight. Then when I took her out to the car,she wouldn't get near the car no matter how hard I pulled on the leash. I had to go get her and put her in the car. She was not a happy camper. It could be that it poured rain all day , so she didn't get any outside time today. Maybe I need an extra 1/2 hour lesson at the end of a shared lesson. Who knows.
So anyway, the above course is what we worked on. I shared my lesson with a very nice border collie. That dog looked great tonight. I'm not sure how we looked tonight. Miley was slow going over the a-frame several times. The a-frame has big chunky square slats on it. For bigger dogs their feet can hit the slat and the board at the same time. But for smaller dogs, it has to hit right on top of the slat or before the slat. So I think she doesn't like her toes to hit the slates. It probably doesn't help that I have no slats on my a-frame at home and its rubberized. I think it should be required that all a-frames be rubberized and the slat should have to be rubber or not on the a-frame at all. It really has amazed me how different a-frames slats can be from one trail to the next. Ok , Ill quit talking about that.

On to the lesson. First we did #1-12. So we did well until #9. She got on the table and I went to the left side of #9. I wanted to do a call to heel and then push over the jump and front cross #10 before the a-frame. Meagan said that wasn't a very good line for the dog. It would be better to be on the right of #9 then rear cross 10. That was my plan at first but I thought it would push her wide and she would take jump #20 . So I did it the way Meagan said and it worked perfect.

Then we did 12-20. I had planned to do a front cross after the poles and then rear cross # 14. So this time I talked to Meagan first. She said that tight of a rear cross would pull her to tight and she wouldn't go out to # 15. So I rear cross after #14 and that worked great. I wonder how long it takes for you to learn how to walk a course correctly.

Next, the ferret. Yesterday the sick ferret wasn't doing well. I went to give her the medication and she was completely unresponsive. She did have a gag reflex but that was it. I worked with her for 10 minutes putting honey on her gums and tongue ( when I could get her mouth open) but nothing helped. I put her back in her crate and went to work. I called my husband a couple of times and he said she still wasn't moving. But by mid-morning she started to move around again. This morning she was back to herself again. My husband is calling her Lazarus ( from the bible).