Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Day 73

Hops went to work with me today and was a good boy the entire day. There was time between lessons and classes in the morning so when the puppy day camp had play times I took Hops over to play. He had so much fun racing around with his buddy Finn and the other puppies. In addition to Finn he played with a standard poodle, a golden, a welsh terrier, a spinoni and havanese mix, all around three to four months of age. What fun that was to watch! He played very nicely and came whenever I called him. He was great in nosework class, very focused. We started with two rows of boxes with one box with birch in it and he was perfect. He stayed focused on the boxes and downed as soon as he reached the odor box. He also stayed with it when I continued walking, he is such a good puppy! I had a star pattern set up for the second part of class, a chair in the middle with stools and cones surrounding it. The hide is on the chair and the dogs use the plastic cones and chairs to help them pinpoint where the odor is. He did great with most of the chair hides but the high one he really had to work for. I also did a couple of threshold hides and he nailed those. When it was just Hops I tried adding distractors to the boxes. When I put kibble in one box Hops paid no attention to it and went right on to alert on the odor box. When I put higher value treats in a box, he stopped at it though he did not alert. I kept moving and he came with me. After stopping at it twice he started to ignore it and focused only on the odor box. Smart puppy! In between classes we also worked a little bit on perch work, the chute, the tunnel, the table, and sends to jump standards. Hops did great with everything.

 

In the evening Hops is in fun and focus one class and he did a great job for Jeremiah. He did stays with distractions with release to play tug, backed to the narrow and of a plank and stayed there with food and motion distractions, he did forward and lateral sends to jump standards, quick sits and downs with release to play and he did crate games. He excelled at everything was a very good puppy! We measured the dogs after class and Hops was 16.5 inches, Love was 17 inches. He still has some catching up to do if he is going to get bigger than his sister!

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