Back to Work!

Well spring seems to be at least pretending to be here for the time being (we have had snow storms in April, so I'm not counting my chickens just yet!) and therefore my yard is clean of snow and actually suprisingly dry for this time of year. So it's time to get back to work with the boys! This winter I didn't really do much with anyone but Obi in terms of agility, and obedience.

I have been told that I need to go to the cardi national in PA next year. I keep hearing, "Katrin, it's sooooo close! You have to go!" from one J.G-P. friend of mine :-P But the only way I'm going is if I can actually compete in something and therefore I need to like um actually train the corgi on more than just house manners and kiddie stuff.

One thing I really, really want to do more of is herding. I have one student who comes to agility class as a drop in with her 2 dogs, and the fee she pays me would pay for a herding lesson and the travel to there, and I keep thinking that would be "my" money as opposed to like "food" or "house" or "car" money and I think I want to spend it on herding lessons. BUT before we can do more of that I really need to teach Monty a reliable 'down' and 'wait'. He has a pretty sucky down and wait. He does slightly better at a stand or sit and wait, but it's really all bad due to my lack of training it. I can usually teach a pretty good stay, but Monty loves to push every button known to man and I need to be more consistent about not letting him do that.

I think a year is a reasonable time line to get a good solid 'wait' and 'down' on the herding field (and agility and obedience) and get some good practice with the sheep and be ready for HT or PT come the national.

Once he gets a good wait and down, we could then do rally and agility. For agility I will also need to teach him weaves. He does everything else. Has generally nice solid contacts, keeps the bars up, knows the other obstacles minus the weaves.

Then at the national we could do- herding, agility and rally. Which would be more than enough and could be fun.

So my list for Monty is-

Reliable drop and down.
Reliable sit, stand and down stay
Weaves
Precision Heeling (he does a nice loose leash walking right now but not competition ready)
Train for HT or PT on sheep

I have a year, now to get cracking!