After a full week of oppressive heat and humidity, today was a gift with a high of “only” 83°F. It’s been a wonderfully cool and breezy night as well. Not quite cool enough to be “Rottweiler weather” yet, though!
There was one very unexpected benefit to last week’s heat. For our “Brilliant Recall” lessons, I have been aiming to do very short, more frequent training sessions with both dogs. I’ve been trying to shorten our rally and obedience training sessions as well, since I’m not always good at stopping at the right time before boredom sets in, and at a point where we can end on a high note. But the heat guaranteed that all of the outdoor training sessions would in fact be short and sweet.
I’m also happy to report that both Freya and Axel are finally getting on board with playing tug games according to my rules. I don’t think the heat had much to do with that, though. Now that I’ve finally been successful in getting Freya interested in playing tug with me, I have to make sure to hang on to my end of the tug. It actually took me by surprise the first time she started getting into it. So I was not hanging on tight enough and lost my end, and unfortunately almost ended up in a game of keep-away. Now that is one game I certainly don’t want to encourage!
Something I need to improve on is record keeping, not just for the training journal that we’re recommended to keep for the “Brilliant Recall” course, but for all of our training, shows, and trialing. I’m experimenting with the note-taking features of my BlackBerry and Sony Reader as well as the time-honored small spiral-bound notebook. For work and school projects, I’ve found that the act of reorganizing and typing up my handwritten notes helps my understanding of the material as well as to reorganize my thoughts and plans if needed. So I’m also deciding whether a private blog, database, or spreadsheet would make the best electronic training journal. More on that as I figure it out!
(NaBloPoMo | August ’10: 15 of 31)