Freya

Freya’s Midweek Mischief – not our best work

October 29, 2009 by kathi

Sometimes Freya and I work in perfect harmony. Wednesday evening’s class was not one of those times.

I’m posting a video from our training session anyway. It doesn’t show our best work (I sincerely pray that is not our best work, anyway) but it does demonstrate how video can be a huge help in identifying areas to work on.

For example, I could feel she was sometimes lagging behind me, particularly on the straight figure 8 through the cones. What I didn’t realize is just how much she was lagging at points, and how little encouragement I was giving her to keep up, until I watched the video.

One thing that we lost most of our points on in our first trial in July was for not having a loose leash. Video is almost essential to help with this, because the leash doesn’t always feel particularly tight in your hands (or maybe that should say my hands) even when it is tight enough to warrant a point deduction.

So here we are. Don’t laugh too hard, and hopefully next week’s video will show our better sides!

Freya’s Midweek Mischief

October 21, 2009 by kathi

Last Saturday, Sue kindly offered to share her Wednesday evening private lesson time with anyone in the group obedience class who wanted to do Rally Obedience. Since I got home from work just early enough to make the drive in time, Freya and I took her up on the offer.

There were just three of us with a total of four dogs, so it was a good opportunity to run through a couple of typical novice-level courses and get critiques from each other and our instructor.

Freya wasn’t working particularly well. She was very distracted and I just could not get her to focus until the hour was almost over. I think part of the problem was that we should have taken more time to warm up, both at home before leaving and before joining the group. It was still a worthwhile evening, though. We can really use all of the practice time available before the next trial, and the more of it that is away from home, the better.

Unfortunately I forgot to bring my video camera, and we are all at the point where it will help us to be able to see our own performances and note things that need correcting, as well as being told what to watch for. I’ve now added a “bring video camera” reminder to all of the training dates on my calendar.

As usual, Freya is having a post-training nap. Axel is wide awake and looking for trouble. I’d better go and find him some!

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09: 21 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 243 of 274)

Saturday Freya: last class of the session

October 17, 2009 by kathi

Today was the last class of Freya’s current group obedience class session. Much of the class was devoted to our final exams, where we each ran through a series of exercises similar to a Novice obedience routine, and received an oral critique from our instructor afterwards. The best-performing Intermediate dog and the best-performing Advanced dog each get small trophies.

Today the best-performing Advanced dog was Freya! It was nice to have the star student at the other end of the leash. I’m more accustomed to my canine teammates being class clown or junior gang banger, although they all come around eventually.

Freya always spends a good part of the afternoon napping after we return home from class. Thinking apparently wears her out.

I took the opportunity to work with Axel on the AKC Rally Novice exercises he hasn’t learned yet. The Call Front-1, 2, 3 Steps Backward actually went very well. He caught on right away to what he was supposed to do. Stop and Down didn’t go quite as easily, so I stopped before he… make that I… really screwed something up and we’ll work on that tomorrow.

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09: 17 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 239 of 274)

Saturday Freya… that just doesn’t work, does it?

October 10, 2009 by kathi

“Saturday Freya” just doesn’t work like “Friday Freya” so we’ll have to come up with a better name for Freya’s obedience class posts. The newly forming Rally Obedience classes are probably going to be on Wednesday evenings, so maybe we can have “Freya’s Midweek Mischief” instead.

We often have potential students visiting our class to observe. This is a great idea and I think everyone who is considering a dog obedience class should do this. It’s very frustrating being faced with six to eight weeks in a class with an instructor whose methods you are uncomfortable with, and an hour out of your life to observe a class before signing up is well worth the time. Our visitors today included a young family of four with two elementary school age daughters. Mom was very impressed with Freya, and I appreciated that she took the time to tell us. Freya was on her best behavior today and she really was working nicely. In the interest of truth, I did mention that Freya is almost six and that her younger, wilder days were not quite as impressive.

There were no private lessons scheduled for the hour after class, so we set up a simple Rally course for those who were interested in the upcoming Rally class. There are three of us who are planning and training for November trials, so the opportunity to do run-throughs and “spot” each other’s runs was great. Freya and I are hoping to earn the remaining two legs for UKC RO1 the weekend of November 14-15. Sue and Onslow, and Cathy and Jazzie and Lefty are planning for an APDT trial the following week. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend their trial since we will be leaving for vacation a couple of days earlier.

I hope I don’t confuse myself with the differences between the rules of the various organizations! As you know, I’m also practicing AKC Rally at home with Axel since he will be entered in Rally Novice whenever he is at a show where it is offered and does not conflict with the show ring times. Fortunately the similarities are greater than the differences so hopefully everything will be fine.

(NaBloPoMo | October ’09: 10 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 232 of 274)