#ipo obedience

Light training with Cas today. Getting fronts straighter, loling at both of us peering around my gut to make eye contact, BALL, some heeling I guess, a handsome bird.

Beautiful!

That Maligator smile. Worked on fronts today and got some nice input (thanks @cynological and @shotinthekidney for the tips, I’ll be happy to try all the methods mentioned!). This is the first time I’ve tried using the leash method with Castiel and had some nice success with it - luring previously was just not clicking (no pun intended) for him. Going to work with a pedestal and some chin rests to tweak it up a bit! Here I was using the desk as a guide as Cas likes to swing his rear out perpendicular to me, and clicking and jackpotting (with Happy Howies, yum!) every time he offered a closer front. I used a prong on backwards to keep up light leash pressure and direction, which he responded well to. I don’t make a habit of using a prong in Cas’ obedience, so it was nice to see he caught on pretty quickly. I’m using a lot of handler help with my body for right now as he tends to pick up on that very easily - the hard part about Castiel is he’ll overcompensate. If I want him to pivot a hair left, he’ll swing his entire rear left a foot and a half. I need to find a happy medium with him between his sensitivities and my finding a bit more finesse. I typically teach fronts with a ball under my chin. Rogue’s front was taught using that method and a bit of luring - I simply lift my chin and drop the ball as a reward. This obviously didn’t work with Castiel (I’ve got quite a lovely bruise as a result). Cas has a hard time working with a toy reward when not in drive, so I think we need to work on more toy reward markers before I try that method with him again.

Some heeling today - the wind knocked my phone over and I lost my one good rep. Castiel wasn’t feeling it today as he’s been a stressball with my bad NCS episode, but we tried.

Dumbbell practice!

Rogue was thoroughly embarrassed by me today at IPO. I forgot her ball at home so I was working on praise and being excited with her leash, which went surprisingly well. After she jumped on our "judge," (our trainer/decoy) I ended up doing a weird zig zag walk for our 50 heel paces and got yelled at and threatened with a field sobriety test (I would have passed, shut up @doberbutts ). Redid the 50 paces but Rogue had gotten bored and her attention started to wander. Pace changes went okay with minimal forging (from Rogue) and minimal tripping (from me). I did three right turns and was 10 paces to my fourth (there are only two in the BH pattern) before my trainer inquired where the fuck I was going. Group figure eight went fine. I completely forgot the pace changes off lead. Sit out of motion was spot on, little hesitant on the down out of motion (I paused and gave the command which is allowed in BH) but her front was rather zig zag even though she finished straight on. I was about to continue heeling when my trainer had mercy on me and told me I was done and could go do the long down. He did say we really had nothing huge to work on other than my own forgetfulness and that we'd easily pass the BH. So now I'm just drilling it into my head and praying I don't have brain fog on trial day.

Sit out of motion. Slow, but coming together. I'm incapable of walking a straight line as well.