Lacey

Lacey is finally getting the whoa. She did outstandignly and would whoa away from me up to about 6 feet sometimes more. On the most recent training session I didn't have to reinforce her at all on the checkcord, so I decided to let her drag it and work around the house. All went very well at first. While traing whoa I still give the "hup hup" for a turn command whenever I turn and as they are on checkcord they have to turn. She has been getting this nicely too, and continued to take the handling while dragging the cord. She whoa-ed well and just needed a little reinforcement once. As she got more bold running and dragging the line, I had to "here" her back in a time or two. This was good until she got into some cover and then she went back to the "I can run run run and not listen attitude" I could see it in her body posture and immediatly called here and had to reinforce on 3 to (bump1, bump2, bump3) to get her to turn around and come back. It is just a reminder that she is going to give me a lot of tests and I need to always be able to correct her and never ask her to do something I can't enforce for a long long time. :) There is a good chance that this will set back the "away from me" whoa as she had a pretty tough "here" correction and may go back to trying to do that everytime. SO I will have to work out from nearby and on chort lead next time to keep things going. But this is not a bad thing all in all, as this is the distinction she need to get. Here means one thing and whoa means another and she needs to be able to distinguish "on the fly" as it were and under stress or while she is trying to misbehave. If she isn't set back to much, Lacey is maybe a week out from moving to FF. I hate FF by the way - so boring... but she needs it most as she is very sloppy on the retrieve after years of playing keep away with rat terriers.