Gracie 10 months

Holy cow.  Gracie is definitely a late bloomer in terms of drive and energy.  She's always had a really great work ethic but lately her intensity is, well intensifying.

Here is Gracie doing her best impression of a border collie.  Recently she's been doing a very fast down whenever she sees a dog at a distance at the dog park, or out in the yard at work.  Then as the dog gets closer she continues her freeze and flattens her head.  Of course then the obnoxious body slamming aspect of her Labrador heritage comes out as she charges the unsuspecting dog.

Biggest challenges this month continue to be jumping up during greetings and being good on long downs.  Service dogs have to be content to do long down stays at meetings, restaurants, church services, etc.  Gracie is becoming a bit antsier and standing up more often.  She refuses to just go to sleep in case she misses something exciting.

Working on:
1. Object placement: Clean up is done, targets the bucket nicely with an object and doesn't try to step in it anymore :)  Adding height to the chair for future "rise-drop" is still on the to do list.

2. Moving downs- Mostly has a fast drop while heeling.  Needs a bit more work on getting the mostly to always while I keep on heeling instead of stopping.  Have also done a few drop on recalls from short distances.

3. Light off- just started to combine light off with switch on, all at nose level height.  She needs a bit of a warm up on moving her chin down on the wall before she is consistently good in a session.

4. Recalls- Not as good as they were a month ago, especially for coming to people other than myself.

5. Bucking bronco!- Yes, I finally started teaching my favorite trick of a leaping 360 flip :)  She's picking it up very, very fast!