I swear I don't know where the time goes. It just seems to be galloping away without so much as a by-your-leave.
So what happened to Wednesday? Well, I taught a double Utility class and Sanity did the best she could to do the demo part. While I have some parts of Utility roughed in the rest is very shaky. As an example, signals are almost non-existent, ditto the moving stand. The directed retrieve is coming along, as is the go out and the beginnings of the directed jumping. Scent work should come along pretty fast since the beginning work is already in place. I still think it is going to be a stretch to stay ahead of the Utility students I have now.
Worked all the open exercises outside during the one short window of reasonably warm day. As I was crawling into bed I realized I had somehow managed to forget to do stays. Hope that doesn't get me this weekend.
Thursday was a flurry of lessons, working the day care/train pup and trying to get enough rest to be able to teach the evening class. By the time we got to class I realized I had yet to work Sanity even once. So my solution was to set up "stations".
The big room was was set with 4 lanes. First lane was a drop on recall lane. Second lane was a retrieve over the high jump. Third lane was for the retrieve on the flat. Fourth lane had a series of cones and was for doing heeling in a weave/circle pattern. In the smaller room there was a broad jump station and another station to be used for recalls/drops/retrieve on the flat. In the front lobby area I set up a negative space so people would work on the place command. And finally, in the dim back hallway, everyone was to do a recall of some sort.
For the next hour the place was really humming as people moved from station to station. One of the things this sort of set-up does is force the dogs and handlers to really focus on what they are doing and ignore what is going on next to them. It was great for Sanity and she managed to stay really focused for all the stations but the very first one. The drop on recall is really worrying me and then I have to worry about making sure my toss of the dumbbell is a good one. There has not been enough time to truly proof her on how to handle the off angle bad throws. Goodness, there is more than enough to worry about tomorrow.
At least it appears the slow down and the popping on my return may have been corrected. I hope, I hope.
Today by the time I had worked the JRT pup and taught a lesson I was really too pooped to do much more. So came in, ate some lunch and took a nap. Later we went out so I could get my hair cut. I was supposed to go get a picture of Sanity and I taken for publicity purposes and was just too tired. I'm going to get Jesse to go downstairs with me and see it we can come up with something right here. If not, then I will try to make myself go someplace on Monday.
We started with a set of out-of-sight stays and then began to work the stations.
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