Obedience Training

I haven't shared much of The Duck's specific obedience training lately.  Mostly we're just practicing skills once a week, twice if I have the time.  The Ring Confidence class I'm teaching and have her in is going very well, still surprising me with her maturity.  Specific skills are still way more of a work in progress.

Main things we're working on right now are her go outs.  Still so hard for her.  Actually that's not entirely true anymore.  Zumi is usually very straight now if there aren't any distractions near by such as the jumps being closer than usual placement, a cone kinda near, or something similar.  Then she almost always succumbs unless I start close enough to the spot that the distraction is less obvious.
But the work is paying off in making the real utility picture easier now!
The actual directed jumping portion needs quite a bit of work too.  Still very hard for Zumi not to come straight to me.  Wants to jump on the way out and not jump on the way back!

We've also been working on her moving down vs moving stand.  The moving down seemed to break when I started focusing more on the stand and she's just starting to piece together the difference.

Fronts with a item in her mouth are hard so I've recently started using a platform.  Less so for me to think that Zumi is actually thinking about the angles, but more to teach her about collection.  Zumi's a good girl and doesn't do her victory lap with her formal retrieve items in the way that she does with her toys, but I can tell that she SO wants to and this leads to less thinking on fronting as soon as she has a bit of speed with the dumbbell.  Close up we've worked different angles and are making progress.

And finally the broad jump.  I've been working on Zumi taking the broad jump and not cutting the corner no matter where I stand.  I vary my location from the normal spot to starting all the way back at her side.  I used a cone for awhile, now nothing.

This was Zumi's last session at the club.  I love using toys to reward her whenever possible, but sometimes I use her dinner to train.  Not too exciting, most of the session is on the moving stand vs moving down.