July 25, 2009

circles, circles and more circles!


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Since a big thunderstorm cancelled our kayak trip this morning, but the weather turned nice by afternoon, I decided to do more practice on his circling. I borrowed a cool gate for this that expands from about 1' diameter to about 15' diameter. The photos above are from the video I did of our training session today:
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VIDEO: Circle training
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I don't know if it will help in the herding pen, but at least I'll know he has a foundation of cues for each direction and the "wait" (stop) practice is helpful too. I'm not up to the point of adding verbal cues for the directions yet, but I think I'll be able to add them soon. This is actually our second practice session and Dazzle had 2 dips in the pool between runs today :-).
Thank-you Lonnie for letting me borrow your gate! I think it's going to do the trick!