No football games, no appointments, no meetings! A weekend at home with "nothing" to do (besides the long list of regular chores of course). I'm looking forward to getting out and tracking, doing some agility training and taking walks with the dogs.
Utility training with Noel has been going well. Scent articles have been great except for one day where she ran out and tried to retrieve every article in the pile. Thankfully that didn't last. We worked this morning on directed jumping. I started moving her more toward center position, as well as me gradually moving more toward center position on the other side. She was 100% this morning but we have a little distance left to go. We've also been working regularly on attention work during signals. This is something that I had worked hard on with Paige several year ago and it paid off in the ring, and it is something that I always tell my students. I reward attention before and in between signals as much or more than I do the signals themselves. I want watching me to be Noel's default behavior when she's nervous or unsure. Attention work is something that we work hard on in all level of our classes, especially reliable off leash. Not so much in the context of formal competition work, but just teaching the dog that looking at mom or dad is always a good thing. So by the time they get to competition level classes their attention on their handler is already distraction proofed.
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