Rally 2 Week 5

Gunner graduated from Rally 2 tonight.  Now he will progress to Rally 3 with the goal of having fun playing Rally together. We're grateful for our coach's support and appreciated the reminder that Gunner definitely needs a job.

Tonight we played two new signs, the 1,2,3 signs.  

Halt 1-2-3: Halt, 1- 2- 3: Handler stops, dog sits in heel position. While maintaining heel position, Team heels one handler step, handler stops, dog sits. Team heels two handler steps, handler stops, dog sits. Team heels three handler steps, handler stops, dog sits. Team heels forward.

The handler has to be early in asking the dog to sit so he knows not to keep forging onward while the handler is stopping after only taking one, a couple, or three steps. During the walkthrough, be mindful of how close to (or far from) the sign cone the team needs to be to have the right amount of space to finish all three steps.

Call Dog Front 1 - 2 - 3 Backwards: Team stops heeling forward, as handler steps backwards and calls dog to front position, dog sits facing handler. Handler takes one step back with dog, dog sits facing handler. Handler takes two steps back with dog, dog sits facing handler, Handler takes three steps back with dog, dog sits facing handler. Handler has dog return to heel position by the method of choice without sitting. Team heels forward.

Gunner did this fairly well.  His front paw waving (a vestige of his trick training) was making me laugh but we persevered through the class clown antics.

Pearls:

• Homework this week includes working on prompt sits while the handler takes only one step, or only a couple steps.  Vary the steps randomly so the dog does not start to anticipate a pattern.
• Front sits are pretty solid, and we will continue to reinforce these.