Thursday, 9 June 2011

The morning after training ....

Feeling confident, Chester and I went out on our walk this morning. Got into the field where I usually do a stay exercise before letting him off, instead we did some off lead heel work. He's good at this but I just need to pick my pace up, not look at him all the time and get those turns a bit tighter.

We did our usual walk all over the field, putting in some stops and recalls. Went into another field, sat him down, put in a stay and walked away with the dummy. Placed it and returned. I noticed that he looked really steady in his stay so this is definitely improving.

I wanted to make sure he didn't move until he heard my command. I have to watch he doesn't go by me returning, bending down or putting my arm out. I need to do all of that, line him up and then give him the 'away' command. He did a beautiful retrieve and bought it straight back to me. It was perfect so just one for that session.

I then noticed he was on point. I knew straight away it was a duck! Although I had checked the river for ducks we'd walked quite a lot by this point and one had obviously paddled up stream. Chester chased it along the bank for a good few hundred yards, I put in a recall whistle and he returned straight up to me. I slipped his lead on as I wasn't impressed by him chasing and we walked into the next field and did some more off lead heel work.

All was soon forgiven and we had a good game of ball to finish! (I have noticed that he is also dropping the tennis balls into my hand now so really pleased with this).


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