Day 82

Hops went to work with me today. Before classes started I played tug with him and did chutes and tunnels with tug as the reward on the agility side. He is fun and fast to run already! He spent most of the day crated but was an angel. He never complained and his crate was uncovered (and has been for awhile) all day. He did a few short demos, the chute, moving downs and going around a cone. He did all of them very well.

Hops's mom, Joy, watching her son's training video.

She watched it five times!

When we came home the dogs ran around the yard then I crated Hops and trained the boys, then traded and brought Hops outside to train. We had an assignment to video him going around things so I practiced having him go around a stool, a trash can and a jump standard. He sometimes turned before making it around because he knew I was going to run away, but then we would try again and he would make it around before driving after me. What a fun puppy!

Hops just had an amazing nosework session. He is such a great puppy. We started with boxes with one combination odor out and four pizza boxes as distractions. At first there was only dried cheese in the pizza boxes and Hops paid no attention to them, alerting on the odor box every time. When I put fresh, high value treats in the pizza boxes, Hops stopped and tried to get in it the first time but we ignored him then I tapped a different box (not the odor box) and he left the distractor, started searching again and alerted on the odor box. The second time he stopped at the pizza box but quickly moved on, then they no longer distracted him. What a smart puppy! Then we did interiors searches. The first room had a birch and a combo hide and he is still new to multiple odors. He found the first one right away but went back to it, I walked away from it and he came with me and as soon as he got into odor near the 2nd hide he forgot about the first and alerted on the 2nd. Smart pup! He then searched 5 more rooms, doing a great job in all of them. He saw lots of new pictures and found all the hides. Great puppy!