Getting Sidetracked In A Good Way

One thing leads to another and I never know what I'll end up doing next...

We are currently working the exercises in Susan Garrett's 5 Minute Recall course and of course as one thing leads to another I find myself also incidentally working lots of little other things in association with the recall games, and coming up with lots of new ideas too. It is a lot of fun :)

This week I have started occasionally using the dogs' sack bed in place of a crate as a starting/ending point for exercises. They actually love it because they can take a flying leap to land on it, so it has become quite exciting. The only thing I have to watch is that the whole bed goes skidding across the floor with the force of their leaps both to and from! This is less of a problem when outside on the grass though. Whilst they are very excited to jump on and off I need to work on them staying there until I release them. Fair enough, as I have only just started doing this, so our focus the next few days will be building value for staying on the bed no matter what I do, and gradually introducing more distractions to the point where I can have one of them staying on the bed whilst I work another dog. Obviously our continuing training in crate games will help with this also. I see it being a very handy tool, being able to place the dog on a bed/table or such and know they will wait there until released. It will also transfer over to the 'official' table in agility, having a dog with great drive TO the table (or bed as it may be), with an excellent stay once there and also able to blast off at full speed once released.