Wonderful Weather

Well what a difference a bit of sun makes! Rupert has now mastered the weaves, I'm still keeping his guide on the first and last poles to help him get those entrances, but I'm really pleased with Rupert and myself for working through the method and getting a great result in a little over 4 weeks. We were at Jo's yesterday after a long break, she had put a short course up using all the contacts and weaves and he was very good, but it did highlight our problem areas which we shall be working on over the next couple of weeks - the dreaded pull in's and his see saw, I haven't really done much with it as I've been concentration on his weaves so it's nice to have another area to work on, including full courses.

Crufts on Friday, we have to be up really early as we want to be in Hall 1 for 7am giving us plenty of time to settle both Rupert and myself before we go in the ring, Sheila has trimmed him to perfection so all that remains for me to do is make sure he has a good bath the night before, luckily he has swimming on Thursday night so thats half the job already done!

MUD

I am getting a bit fed up of this dreary weather now! Rupert goes from being lovely and clean to filthy after every walk!
We have had an eventful weekend, at the MBCC breed assesment day on Saturday Rupert was a stooge dog, Amy was meant to handle him in preparation for Crufts, but unfortunately he had other ideas! he found the whole experience without his mum a bit too much so we had to swap, after which he settled down and worked quite nicely, however this does mean that I will now be showing him at Crufts! this was never in the plan.
At training on Sunday morning I decided to try him on closed weaves, he did them without a hitch, not only once bu 100% of the time, so after the training classes I decided to put his guides on the upright set to see how he went on those! not good, he failed every time, I think it's because they weren't quite level so I put them back on the swivel ones and again 100% success, maybe I rushed so a few more sessions on the swivel before I try again.
On the swimming front, we had a brilliant session on Friday, Jane used the underwater camera this time to watch his back end, I had said last week he didn't seem to be using his back legs and the camera proved he was being lazy and relying too much on his floatation jacket, so this week we motivated him with a tennis ball and he soon started zooming around the pool using his back legs to propell himself along. Next week we might try taking his jacket off to see how he goes.