I am in love with my dog… Pan’s amazing, full of life, cheeky, funny and passionate about whatever he sets his mind on!
The male brain
Allright… subtitle should have been male dog brain- it’s quite an interesting thing. It’s been a journey seeing it develop; going from short focus to working up to half an hour, as well as ignoring distractions. Sure eyeing anything for a long time never really was a problem, but focussing on ‘non moving’ tasks was definetly a challenge. The hormonal teenager seems to have grown up- at least a little- I cannot say I regret neutering Pan.
Enjoy life
This is Pan’s life style- and whenever things do not go as he wishes, he’ll make sure I know (naughty barking). I am glad to see that our foundation work is paying off; he’s much easier to life with and a joy to train.
Love Life
On the job
Agility training is coming along nicely. Jumping at full height is looking good. We”ve started our weave training, and it’s great to see how he works trough failures: tail up and thinking cap on!
Slowly we- or really I am slowly picking up our new system, it’s exciting to see where I make mistakes as that leaves room for improvement. Pan’s picking up my body language nicely, allthough keeping a balance between working close and away wíll remain a challenge. Now and then the sheepdog comes in to do an outrun- and truthfully that part is a bit of a training error on my side as well.
We still have a lot to do: adding some verbal cues to my handling, and adding movement. My movement is one of our biggest distractions, and i am making sure that is included in our weave training from the start! (Something I regret not having done more sooner in other training.) And the biggest slice left is our contacts; Pan is happily banging the seesaw and targetting the plexiglass- now all is left is continuing to build massive value and adding distractions. At some point (this fall) I will have to train a proper running A-frame.
So much left to do – occasionally it’s overwhelming, especially when you start to compare yourself and your progress to others. But from the bottom of my hart- i can really say I enjoy training! I really do! I can get all excited about coming up with plans to train the tiny pieces, see how that pays off, and sometimes change the plan to get rid of the holes in our training…
