It's amazing what almost two weeks of NO ACTIVITY will do.... (to humans and furbabies alike!).
I took Bailey to his class last night... he received a 1/2 hour massage (he LOVES these... almost goes to sleep! LOL) and 1/2 hour of agility. He did ok... but by the end of the 1/2 hour he was pretty well spent. Mel showed me how to warm Bailey up prior to exercising... and how to appropriately stretch him following exercise. I've always warmed him up prior to exercise, but have not been one to stretch him afterwards, so this will take some getting used to. Not only am I not familiar with it, but Bailey is like "WHAT are you doing???" haha So... we'll get better at this as time passes.
We were driving home and passed Dave's house (the professional police/bomb/drug dog trainer I know very well and have worked with off and on for years). He was out in the yard with his solid black german shepherd working him. It was dusk... he says because he's black he can't work him outside in this heat during the day, so he works him at dusk. I pulled in and sat with Bailey in the chair and watched. OMG ... it was awesome! Dave and this beautiful black german shepherd are headed to the schutzhand nationals in a few months. I enjoyed this last night so much.... I had forgotten how much fun it is to work with Dave and watch him work these unbelievable animals!
Dave gave me some great pointers on teaching Bailey the "back" command. Bailey knows how to walk backwards on command when he's in front of me. But I'm having trouble getting him to do it BESIDE me... so now I have an "assignment" to work on for the next two weeks, and I go back in two weeks so he can see how I've done with it.
See? I'm constantly in training too! Still much to be learned ... for all of us!
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