Halle's First Day at Agility

On Saturday, September 12th my mom and I took Halle to an agility fun day at Leader of the Pack Canine Center. They like to hold these fun days a week or two before their Beginning Agility classes start. I really like this training center because they only use positive reinforcement and really try to teach owner and dog how to bond and work well together. Halle is very in tune to me, listens well to commands that I give her, and reacts well to my body language. We are learning from each other, and I love working with her.

We were the second to arrive and so we started off with plenty of one on one attention and direction from Linda (owner and trainer of the center). I walked Halle around the place to let her check it out a bit and the first thing we tried was a simple jump. Linda held Halle and I walked around to the other side of the jump and told Halle to come. She took the jump right away and got plenty of praise afterwards! Throughout the time that we were there Halle got better and better and "jump" and seemed to start learning what the command meant.

Here's a picture of Halle jumping:

Here's Halle jumping over a broad jump (many dogs think they are supposed to step on it, but Halle never touched it):

The next thing we tried was the hoop jump. As a command I call this "circle". We worked this one the same way we worked the jumps at first - Linda held Halle and I called her through. No picture for this one!

Weaves were our next obstacle to tackle. I treated the weaves as three separate obstacles. Going through the first two poles and coming back to me through the second and third would be considered the first, etc. Halle did well with the weaves and seemed to enjoy doing them until we got towards the end when she was tired - then she didn't care for them too much :)

Here's Halle doing the weaves:

After working on the obstacles inside we headed outside to try bigger and tougher ones. First off was the dog walk. This tends to be a harder obstacle for large dogs because the boards are skinny and the dog has to coordinate itself to make sure all feet stay on. I use "walk it" for a command. The first part was getting Halle to realize what was expected of her when she walked up to the board. At first she put her front feet on and tried to walk up half on/half off. After a few more tries she got all her feet on the board and walked up, across, and down no problem. She enjoyed the praise afterwards and was more than willing to do it again!

Here's Halle on the dog walk:

Next to try was the A-frame. It took Halle a couple tries to get all the way to the top, but she did it! She seemed to really like this obstacle.

Here's a couple pictures:

Halle did very well with the tunnels. She was pretty comical - she would go to the other end of the tunnel and poke her head out waiting to see me and then she would continue out of the tunnel. (:

Here's a picture:

Overall, we had a wonderful time trying out agility and we are very proud of Halle for how quickly and easily she took to each obstacle. I plan to get Halle into an agility class hopefully within the next few months and once we reach a level that we can compete, I would love to trial with her. Lots of plans for the future!

Time at the Lake

I did not get a chance to blog so I apologize!

Last weekend we headed to Sauk Centre, MN with Millie, Halle, and Ozzie. A friend of our's lives there on the lake and invited us up to have some fun. We went up Friday night and did not get there until around 7-7:30ish. The girls and Ozzie were very excited to see everyone - we met my sister, Lindsay, and niece, Gabby there who had their dog, Stone. We also met Lindsay's friend, Cindy, and her mom there. Cindy owns Jaeger (Rosco x Millie).

We had a nice dinner while the dogs ran around playing together. The dogs eventually tired themselves out and relaxed a bit inside while we talked and played cards.

Saturday morning we got up and had breakfast. Ozzie and the girls were excited and ready to go. We headed over to the lake and let them swim. This was Millie's second time swimming and she was SO excited when she saw the water. She absolutely loved it. This was Halle's first time seeing water and, to my surprise, she literally jumped right in! I think she was a little surprised at first and had to realize what she had done. Each of the girls did jump off of the dock a couple times, but mostly went from the shore. Ozzie had a blast too! It was his first time seeing water (at almost 12 weeks old). He swam in the water just like the "big dogs" and, of course, went and rolled around in the sand afterwards because that is what puppies do!

We went back to the house to grab a few things and then we went out on the pontoon with Jaeger, Millie, Halle, and Ozzie. Jaeger was "king of the boat" as he enjoyed his spot sitting on top of the seats. Ozzie was TIRED. He had already had such a big day (and weekend!) and he passed out right away and stayed sleeping our entire time on the boat. Millie and Halle enjoyed laying in the sun and sticking their heads out when the boat was moving. This was their first experience on a boat and they loved it. It was a great way to dry them all off too!

After we got back it was almost time for us to head home. It was an hour and a half trip for us so we left around 4 because we had to be back for other plans that night.

Monday was Ozzie's last day here. Jim came to pick him up that evening. Ozzie is living with him and his daughter who absolutely fell in love with him from seeing pictures. He may even keep his name! We are happy that Ozzie has gone to such a great home, but it was definitely hard to see him go.