Archive for November, 2005
Monthly Archive
Monday, November 28th, 2005
New Question
How do I figure out Rafe’s head? He
works well in training, then gets to a show and loses
focus entirely—sometimes just wanders off to visit
the stewards or look at dogs outside the ring.
Fortunately it was just practice. Corrections don’t
make a dent, so I don’t bother. Right now my only
idea is to make him start over every time his
attention strays at all.
It is clearly not a “lack of brain” problem, since he learns things quickly and
understands the exercises, just seems to have no sense
of responsibility about working. Being beautiful
apparently is sufficient.
Cheers!
No Comments » - Posted in Life with Rafe and Mack by Julie
Monday, November 7th, 2005
Again
Sunday they just have the one-hour pick-up and
drop-off time, so it was busy. I was waiting for the
dogs to come up front when one of the kennel staff
came out and asked which ones I wanted. When I said
the shepherds, she replied, “Oh, they are the BEST
dogs.”
Well, we knew that.
Cheers!
No Comments » - Posted in Life with Rafe and Mack by Julie
Thursday, November 3rd, 2005
Rafe
People who don’t know him think he looks
dangerous–and that is good, since he is a big
pushover. When we walk, those afraid of dogs cross
the street. I like having a big, dark shape beside me
at night.
On the other hand, the DSM shepherd people had him in
their laps in two seconds.
Re the figure 8, the judge was just shaking her head.
She said something like “he certainly is pulling
everything he can think of today.”
Now that it is all over, I am re-thinking. For all my
previous dogs the solution to heeling problems was to
go back on leash and correct. And that is what I did
with Rafe, but now I think it was a mistake. His head
seems to see heeling on leash as something totally
different from heeling off leash, so when I took the
leash off in the ring he was not sure what to do. We
are now back to trying a bit of off leash work, just
to see. I am correcting him by walking into him, etc.