I've been training the dogs pretty regularly, at least every other day, but haven't had time to blog. I just worked with Basil today and we made some great progress on directed jumping; I was able to move the jumps to 8 paces apart (about 12-14 feet) and he did fantastic.
We also did articles and I feel absolutely awful; I made a bad mistake. I forgot that I had put a scented leather article into the pile and instead thought I had put a scented metal in. He retrieved the correct leather article but I thought it was wrong--so I waited, and when he tried to pick it up again, I told him, "Uh uh, go find it," and stepped closer to the pile. Only when I looked at what was sitting outside the pile (the scented metal) did I realize my awful mistake--my poor dog!! And this, after all the problems he's had recently with articles!! BAD TRAINER! I really need to find a better method for keeping track of which article I have in the pile. My poor little dog.
I fed Basil a very small breakfast today and that helped with his motivation. Plus, the weather's nice...it's overcast and cool, and we're going to get more rain later today. Perfect dog training weather, at least till it starts raining anyway.
