I miss Mary Beth

Whilst I was visiting my sister we went to a local dog show in Detroit. It was cool to check it out and fun to watch the Best in Show action. We saw the Boston Terriers being judged as well as the Cavaliers, it was okay, but not as cool since they weren't announcing the classes so we weren't sure what was going on when. There were also some booths and some dog related demonstrations. The flyball demonstration was awesome because one team had a Boston Terrier and the other had a Cavalier. Guess who Anne and I each rooted for? Anyway, I got to thinking about trying Bleys out at Flyball. So tomorrow we are going to go over to watch a couple of teams have a scrimmage. I have no idea is Bleys will be interested at all, but I think we might go back again next Sunday when the lady who runs one of the teams holds a free class. I have a feeling that he will struggle with catching the ball out of the box, but who knows maybe he will love it.

We are also going through a refresher course for pet therapy. It's the same class we took before we were certified, but I'm feeling the need to *ahem* bone up on our skills. I'm a little confused by the instructor though. On Thursday she had us doing something called a walking sit. This is where you are walking along with your dog in a heel, then you tell the dog to sit, and (hopefully) the dog sits while you continue walking. Then you can release the dog to catch up to you. I've never done this skill with Bleys and she didn't cover it in the class we took. She seemed to assume that we all knew this skill although most other pairs struggled as we did. What really confused me was that she didn't provide any suggestions on how to learn this skill. No baby steps to the elevator. Needless to say I got very frustrated...with her. She kept reiterating that we weren't supposed to stop walking when we ask our dogs to sit as if we didn't understand the exercise. That was not the problem for us. The problem was she wanted us to perform a skill that we didn't know and hadn't worked up to at all. So this week Bleys and I are working hard to learn it.

Since he already know that when I stop he is supposed to sit, we started with that. I put a rope on the floor and I would walk Bleys at a heel up to the rope, stop, and tell him to sit. We did this for a long time until I hope he associated coming up to the rope with sitting. Then I told him to sit when I reached the rope and then kept going. He's doing pretty well at it in the house now, but not what I would call reliable. And outside is worse yet (transfer of knowledge to different locations has always been a struggle for Bleys). But we are working on it, and we have until Thursday to get better. Hopefully by then I can add in the walking down as well.