Oct 6th - at home

So today was Baxter's 3rd birthday, I can't believe how the time flies. He was just a puppy the last time I checked and now I realize he is a big boy and Rip is almost 18 months old...yikes.

I have started to work Abbey the terrier each night too so I have been breaking up the boys sessions from part weaving the first time they come out and part jumping the second time they come out. It worked well yesterday when I worked Ripley on some jumping (lateral distance, serp arm, moving doing the serp) so I did it again. We started with jumping as the jumps were already out from last night.

Ripley was the first to come out and he was brutal! His lateral distance wasn't going well, he was knocking bars, flanking me, not wanting to sit, barking at me...just all round frustrating :( I ended up going to my happy place and getting a good 180 out of him then put him away before he could do anything more to frustrate me.

Baxter came out and rocked! I worked on his bending over the one jump back to me. We started fairly close and worked our way back about 8' and he was bending nicely over the jump can coming back. We then did some 90's with 1 stride each way then I asked him for a bounce and he did that both ways. We then worked on 270's and he was doing them really nice, he was even almost jumping jump 2 straight instead of slicing it the way he does sometimes. I also worked on call throughs between the two jumps and threadling it, he did it great! He kept all the bars up and was jumping really nice.

I set up the weaves for the next sessions. I had the same setup as yesterday with the 6 poles with 2 angled. I brought Rip out first and started on the offside entries. He must have been having boy-brain today because he just wasn't even doing this well either. He did the 6 cookies offside, took a break and then I did the 6 onside with the straight entry into pole 1/2. He did the onside better but was a bit spun out so instead of doing each side again I did a bit of playing with him and put him away for the day. Maybe the poor guy needed a break.

Baxter rocked the weaves also. I had him do entries from all over the yard, me moving, me stationary and he only missed 1. For his second sets I decided to add a jump in front and see if I could make him make a mistake. Even though he is getting great entries I worry that with speed and coming at them straight that he will still not try to get in (and lets face it, most entries are pretty much straight in with speed). I put the jump to 16" to get him to just jump it fast (plus I don't have much room for a 26" jump and 6 weaves) and get to the weaves. I held his collar and reved him up and sent him...he entered great. I did this both from onside and offside. I then took the jump to the onside entries and kept clocking it around the entry to be 90 degrees and past even. He missed a couple at the harder entry but at least entered them and then did them right the next time. I moved the jump to offside and did a bit around the clock but had less room as I moved the poles closer to the house to get them off the track of grass that they have destroyed :)