Day 3: Everyone Could Use a Little Patience

Day 3 was another chilly one; but Rob met me out at the club with Hondo and Ranger, and I brought LC, Fred and Maggie. Much to my surprise, all dogs opted to go hop in the pond before we even got down there, so I guess it wasn't too cold for them! I had some grand schemes to teach swim by thing, but decided to keep that for a day above 40 degrees!

I (arrogantly) decided to run Fred all the way across the pond on a cold blind...after he got about 30 yards out, I realized that both his brain and ears must have been frozen because he went deaf on the third whistle and headed for a clump of something. I called him back in and had Rob drop the bumper so that he could see it. After the cold blind became warm, he had a nice line, swim and cheat free return. Rob and I decided that after about another 100 warm blinds, he might be ready to try again...so we are back to teaching them for the next week or two; or until I am all out of patience.

In order to make the most of these short days; we took everyone down to the water and used my new tieouts to keep the bystanders standing by. I have a great video of Fred going across the 60 yards of water to the mark, then getting back in....yet I think this one of Hondo and LC on the Chain gang is much funner. It is nice to have everyone down there because I really think that even when we are training one dogs, the others learn valuable lessons in patience...something that their owners have yet to master!