Mabel’s done a couple of sessions a week of agility lately and is doing great! We had her doing jump tunnel weaves which was great but didn’t get it on video! Then lots of different turns and front cross/wraps etc. She’s really gone off the formal scent work, I took her magnetic tins out with Kong in them but she really wasn’t enthusiastic about searching them out so I stopped. She’s happy to hunt tennis balls and food so will stick with that for a bit!

So I am rather selfishly using the video footage I shot today on how I taught/am teaching contact heel for my daily training post so I apologise @Samantha Preece but here you go! I did a couple takes as to begin with it looked like I was too close to the camera to be able to see what I'm doing! But once I sat down properly to watch it it's not that bad. Hopefully all explained in there but please ask away if you have questions. For anyone else reading this, I am NOT a professional trainer (or fashion icon) by any means and welcome constructive criticism and/or discussion on other ways of teaching this. It's very much a work in progress for us too so sit back and enjoy the training beacon visible from space.

Cannoli knows places pretty well, in the sense when I say the word he goes to his place. However, what I need to work on more is extending his time on place, and not leaving until he gets the break command. We worked on this a bit. Having him go to place, and then when he got off I walked him back. After a handful or so of attempts, he seems to have gotten it a bit. He’s now staying longer on place( couple minutes). Still needs a lot more work, but I’m happy to see some results!

We had an easy day today after Bentley being sick and Muttley still suffering with his leg pain. I took Bentley for a leisurely stroll through the village and to the recreation ground. As I got near there is a children’s playground and there was a dog inside (not allowed). This dog then perused us across the field. I managed to keep Bentley with me up until the other dog got really close. I wasn’t really prepared because I wasn’t particularly planning on playing games, it was more of a sniffy walk. When I took Bentleys lead off initially he was very engaged and I can see our engagement work really paying off. But when the other dog approached I kind of didn’t know what to do. Bentley can be reactive and will just bark in the other dogs face, as if he wants it to just go away. So I tried to stay relaxed and keep things positive but he still barked at it. These are situations where I would like him to remain really engaged with me but it caught me off guard today. Anyway, no disaster. Bentley barked and the other dog ran off. Then I walked Muttley who has been doing the odd yelp but it’s not quite clear what it is that’s causing the pain so we just did a brief mooch through the woods.

Have not posted since June but have decided to try and make use of the summer weather and Christmas break to take a look at my basic agility and hoopers cues. So today have started the list and broke out the weaves and a couple of jumps for some warmup. In my quiet time have still been training and we passed our USAR operational assessment and so are now one of 8 dog teams in the country who are on call for live find search post disaster. Deployments in New Zealand are rare (only major cyclones and earthquakes) so hopefully never needed.