Holes in my plan!

Well no sooner do I post my plan, do I find substantial holes in it!

I went training with Hex at Nancy's today. Firstly he was brill, but already there are holes, well grey areas in my training plan.....

1) Do I name the hoop? Not so easy! When Hex runs through it away from the contacts I had been saying "Go", but as Nancy so rightly pointed out does go now mean duck under a hoop? NO, that was not the idea, so from that I have decided not to call the hoop anything, and instead just have it at the bottom of the contact to stop him from jumping or bailing.

2)For my turns off the contacts do I want left and right, or do I want more acute angles, therefore would different words be best? I think I will stick to left and right.

So already that's the training plan amended! (I knew this was a bad idea!).
It was funny when I got to Nancy's as she had already read my blog so knew and remembered more of what I'd said than I did!

Any way back to his lesson.....
We did lots of new stuff, and like a pleb I forgot my Video camera. We focused on straight lines as Nancy observed that Hex is looking at me too much, and not powering forward. We also did the see saw and a really low dog walk. I love going to Nancy as she always can give me something to think about, actually normally loads!...

The see-saw:
Nancy propped either end on a stool so that it didn't move too far. Needless to say Hex didn't think it was at all scary and hit it pretty fast the first few times, and then pretty much full wack the last. We targeted to a blob of squirty cheese at the end, and like a true male, Hex's stomach ruled his head, and he just kept going back round!

The Dogwalk:
I'm especially pleased with the dog walk as Hex (up to now) has only done 1/2 a down plank.
First we started on the down plank propped on a caravan step. We placed the hoop at the bottom, and targeted him to his toy set 4 ft (ish) back. This he did with huge gusto!
Next we put the up ramp onto the stool to effectively create an A-Frame, and we got him running happily over that. Then we put the whole thing up on a baby trellis, and back chained it back.
The first couple of times (from the start) Hex wasn't sure that was the quickest way and bailed out by galloping down the side. But very quickly he got the idea. I was thrilled because he maintained his stride throughout and ran through with a nice low head position.


Well he did a whole hour and I was stupidly hoping he may be tiered, instead he is galloping around with Riot as I write this, oh well here's to hoping!

I have booked another lesson on Sat with Nancy, so will look forward to that (I have also roped in Jay to film it, so especially for Sarah you can see him work in the light!) 'Till then I'd better asses my Criteria again!