More Brain Training

I can't believe nearly a whole month has gone by since my last post! - Rupert is now 6 1/2 months old and he has had a break from his daily obedience training routine in favour of some outdoor activities, I have taught him to stop on the contact points on the agility equipment, the dog walk is only on the very lowest height and he is only doing the A frame by marking the point from the bottom, it's all been very easy to do using the clicker, and he has really suprised me with how solid the action has become in such a short space of time. Last night I wanted to try something esle so I decided to get 2 weave poles out set about 30" appart and was shaping him to run through them from different angles, it was a slow start as I had the clicker and the treat but wanted him to run away from me, with a little showing he was soon racing through them and running on to a treat I had thrown out for him. I'm in no rush to have him weaving and won't really start until he is 14 months old but if he has an idea of whats to come it should only make it easier when the time finally arrives.
Obedience wise I have laid off the heelwork training for a few weeks, he has plenty of time to perfect it, so this week I have started with "Walk Back" funnily enough when Amy did this with Summer she just seemed to know the command and would happily trot backwards at any given opportunity! Rupert was a little slower to begin with and by the end of the first go, and we are only talking about 2 minutes at a time, he was shuffling his bottom from one sit backwards into another sit! so he was beginning to get the idea that his bottom had to move in order to get the click. Then Amy was helping me and said just to keep quiet and wait a bit longer to see what he did, after a couple of false starts where I was a bit clicker happy he was soon working out that the faster and futher he went backwards the quicker he got the click - clever boy.. it's great to have a training partner who can sometimes point out the obvious to you. I have also found that his downs have also become much quicker as these were quite frankly a little lazy to say the least.
Amy and I are off to the KC Agility Festival followed by a week long Agility show in August all the dogs will be camoing with us but as we now have a new caravan none of them will be allowed inside! poor things - Rupert is very much an outdoors dog, always choosing to sleep on the patio rather than the carpet so he will be quite happy but we might pine for some of his special Rupert cuddles after a long days agility!!