After a long, delayed flight, Rhett arrived at the Denver airport on Monday Night (7/21/08). We didnt get home until almost 3am. Poor guy began his journey from Pennsylvania about 5pm, so almost 12 hours of travel. He is a Great dog! I am thinking of changing his name to "Rip", short for Riptide - though I am catching grief about changing his name from my wife and daughter. I took him out to watch some agility classes this week and he really wanted to run out and participate with what those dogs were doing. He's very loving and people oriented, and yet he gets along with all our dogs and every dog he has met so far. The only one who has hassled him is his sister Rush! Here are some pictures from yesterday when I had him out playing with Skye.
My boy's weaves make me crazy. We can do a trial and have him hit every weave without an issue, and then the next trial, he will miss entries and pop out. Absolutely no consistency from trial to trial. No doubt, I am "feeding" that when we are running and probably contribute to his missing them with worrying about it. I consciously try to not worry about them but who knows.
In training, he has excellent weaves, though even in training he will on occasion miss an entry and though rare, he may come out at pole 10. I haven't really been happy with his entries though because I have to shape them more than I'd like. I am always impressed by some of the very advanced dogs that can seek out and find an entry anywhere. Also, I haven't been pleased with Skye's speed in the weaves - I know he can go much faster, and I recently proved it.
So, I've decided to start making a bigger effort to improve weave performance. First, I am incorporating his favorite game of frisbee with doing weaves in the front yard (not in the more stressful training field). I am also going to follow some of the guidelines by Rachael Sanders and Rhonda Carter on proofing weaves.
Here's a video showing his fast "frisbee" driven weaves and some other weave related clips.
Sometimes we get lucky with the timing of life's events. After last weeks group agility class with Kaylen, I had decided to pull her from any further agility training (see other post). Right about that time, we found out that a sibling of our border collie "Rush" was going to be sold by its current owner. That pup is named "Rhett". He was going to be used in her breeding program but an issue arose regarding one of his testicles being up inside his body, which would not make him a good choice for breeding. We contacted the owner about the possibility of us getting him and to find out about his drive level and if he would make a good agility dog. So... he is going to be coming to live with me! As I have only trained rescues who were already mature, training this guy is going to be a new experience. He is about 9 months old now, so we can build a good foundation. Here are some pictures of him from his current owner -
