Nosework update

Today we went to the park for rally practice. We got there early and Zane did 2 box searches, then I had him search two benches. He likes this work. He likes finding his cookies.

I've noticed that he's entered a phase where he is very unfocused. He's having problems with heeling as he just can't maintain attention on me. Some is concern about other things; some is just ADD - adolescent dog disorder. So my new goal is to build more drive for heel.

I did this with Travis with hot dog heeling. So Zane started today. I hold a hot dog in my left hand. My hand is wrapped around it and he can only nibble the very bottom of the hot dog. And to nibble, he has to be pushing up into that hand. So he gets a nice heads up position, he is driving into heel, and his focus stays on me.

I learned that right now he doesn't have a lot of drive to stay in heel. It took a bit for him to realize that he could control how much hot dog he got. He went through the whole rally course shoving his nose into that hot dog hand. I'll just do this for a couple of months and see what we have.

I really need to figure out how to get him working in drive more often. He can do it and has done it. We just need it more consistent in new places.

He still loves agility. Today I let him do the A-frame for the first time. He ran right over and hit his contact like a champ. I'm also working more circles of jumps. One set had 4 jumps set in an arc. They were spaced so he would bounce through them. He doesn't quite have the spacing down yet. He could bounce the first three, then needed a stride for the 4th. Nice baby work to teach him how to read the spaces between the jumps.