Training Day, The Sequel

March 31, 2007. Today became a day of new challenges for me. Today was the first day of my advanced training course called, Beyond Basics. It was supposed to start last week, but it got postponed due to rain. Sort of like a baseball rain-out. Today was cloudy and cool, so it was a nice working day.

The course today is all outside and there are 7 dogs again. It was much less stressful than the last course because we are outdoors. Pam was very impressed with how much I have improved my obedience since she last saw me. The place we went to was in a forested area with lots of nice trails through it. Sort of like our lake walk, only much bigger.

We started out by having the dogs introduce ourselves to each other and then we went for a walk just to let off a bit of steam. When we got to our training area, we did a review of some of our commands from the last class. Commands like “heel”, “sit”, “stay”, etc.

We then got introduced to a new command which was called “crash”. That is where I get tied to something and Tom and Renee walk away. I am supposed to sit or go down and just wait. I did really well on this one as we have practiced this a bit before.

Then we were introduced to area searching and from there graduated to a bit of tracking. I did pretty well on the search command and after a few tries improved on the tracking command. Before long the two hour session was over and it was time to go home.

By this time the sun was shining brightly, but the wind was still very cold. Once we got home and saw the park was empty, Tom took me out there for a 45 minute run to burn off some of my pent up energy. Renee had a headache, so she stayed in and rested.

I had only a couple of distractions at the park. There were two dogs and a bicycle that came through at different times and I stayed focused on my ball. When the baseball team showed up for their workout, we packed it in for the day.