Playing Catch Up

I'm about 2 weeks behind when it comes to updating my poor blog - I swear I'll do better in the future!

We've not been doing much unfortunately - practice 2 weeks ago was cancelled (very rare!) due to flash flood warnings in the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav. We got about 5 inches of rain in a day and a half and they were predicting storms. The next week we didn't have practice because of Labor Day. Poor Z was absolutely bouncing off the walls after a week without agility as well.

Since the last update, we've done two short object search sessions, both at the agility training field. I was rather disappointed in the results of both.

The first round was last Monday and involved searching for her toy among the stored obstacles. The first "search" was good - fast, accurate - but the next two were much more lackadaisical. The day was hot and we were at the agility field after practicing that for a while, so I'm guessing those two factors combined badly, but Z will need to get over that if she's going to make it as a SAR dog - being hot and tired is not an excuse in the real thing. :\

The second round was last Wednesday and the set up was similar thoguh we used a different toy. All three reps were slow and took a while for her to focus on finding the toy. This round was not during the heat of the day, but it was after a full hour of agility class.

**bad trainer, bad trainer** Isn't the definition of insanity trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?!

Ah well, we have practice with the group tomorrow finally if the weather gods cooperate, so I'm hoping we can get some good victim reps in and some pointers on improving things outside of practice. I have a feeling this means I'm really going to have to buckle down and work a LOT more with her in a more methodical fashion - imagine that!

Good thing I'm an addict...