I remember a time when Secret didn't care at all about toys. She liked food, sure, but she was always pretty slow when food was involved. I worked and worked to turn her on to toys. When it finally started to click, she'd still turn off if food was around. I had to always make sure she had her turn first, because if I brought her out after Kaiser and she saw that I was giving him food, that was it -- she wouldn't work for toys anymore.
Tonight we played on a Happy Hurdle Day course from the Ann Croft Agility Coach Facebook page. It's been a while since we've done one of these! Ann posted one this week that was inspired by some of the fun stuff that just happened at World, so I definitely wanted to try my hand at it.
Secret was a very good girl during her turn (despite biting right through my nail on my thumb....) and I pretty much let her have her biggest reward -- I let her stay in the yard and chew on her plastic frisbee ring while I ran the little dogs. It's her happy place; she just totally zones out.
After I'd ran Kizzy and Kaiser I was feeling a lot more comfortable on the course than when I'd ran Secret, so I wanted to see if she'd give it another go. I still had the treats in my hand from Kaiser's turn, so I figured I'd "let" Secret work for treats instead of a toy this time. She was having none of it. First I could barely get her away from her frisbee. I got her all barky and revved up like before one of our trial runs, but it just wasn't there. When she came trotting out of the first tunnel I said, "forget it." I went and grabbed her stupid plastic ring and then she was on! Open bag of treats on the ground, but she wanted the nasty old busted up remains of a frisbee. And she had a great run! What a weirdo. I'd say all of that work I put into her toy drive paid off, though!
Here's that super special bite wound she gave me. It actually looks a lot more impressive now (typing is fun, by the way). We'll have to see how pretty it is in the morning. It wasn't Secret's fault -- We were tugging on the fabric frisbee on the way back to the start jump and my thumb just slid between her teeth. Watching it on video, I think I actually held it together really well. I can't ever freak out over something like this because I don't want to totally risk shutting Secret down. So I just finished running her with my bleeding thumb and then worked the little dogs and got my open wound covered in gross treat grease. Oh well, it cleaned up well. :o)
The little dogs did well, too! Kizzy had the jumps set at 14", which will be her USDAA height here at some point or another. I do really want to get back to USDAA to finish up Secret's PDCH, but her MACH is the priority at the moment. Once that is out of the way maybe I'll sacrifice some AKC trials to go to some USDAA. But then there's Kaiser's PACH..... Excuse me, but where is my sugar daddy?? I really thought I'd have one by now.
lol.....
No comments:
Post a Comment