10 Months Old!

Secret turned 10 months old earlier this week! It's been a slow week due to rain (hence the extraordinarily bored expression in the photo above!), so there hasn't been much to post. We couldn't let the 10 month mark go by without acknowledgement, though. :o)

Although our training time has been limited, Secret is not, by any means, happy to sit in the house all night. Therefore, we have been having ample opportunity to do several short play sessions each day. The rain is really good for keeping me to a time limit. Secret doesn't seem to care about running around in the rain.

Secret's frisbee work is going very well. She's gotten so good about bringing them back on her own that I've gone to just using one disc -- But honestly, it's mostly because the lazy turd has decided that she won't chase after one disc if I still have the other one in my hand. Going to just one disc solved that problem.

She's chasing the rollers with more enthusiasm than ever, but the biggest change is in the way she's madly tugging with me upon the return. The little stinker has actually been tugging so hard that she's ripping them straight out of my hands -- granted, probably not quite so difficult when they are sopping wet.

The short toss catches have been going so well that I decided to throw a few long & low floaters for her. She came remarkably close to catching a couple of throws out of the air, but right now she has a bit of a dumbfounded look on her face about the whole thing. We'll continue to mix it all up and I'm sure the light bulb will come on shortly.

Secret's energy level seems to be on the rise these days, so we often find ourselves going out for play session #2 within a half hour of coming in from frisbee. I've been taking out the squeaky ball for her and she's really driving towards it well. For some reason, however, she has decided that she doesn't need to bring that toy back anymore.

I've been using the ball to build her drive over single jumps the last few days and it's going very well. I also play around a bit when we get home from work, while I'm still wearing her treat pouch (she goes surprisingly nuts for kibble still). I'm happy to report that she's now driving so well over the jump that last night I started to do some rear cross work with her again. She's still spinning every time, so I went to Susan Garrett's exercise of having her sit in place while I walk behind her, rewarding her when she turns her head as I cross behind. I have a feeling we need to start doing a lot of that to help her pick up the rear cross cues.

It's looking like rain all weekend, so I have a feeling I'll be outside getting wet a lot.