Dumb...bell

So in addition to stockdogging stuff, I'm also training Cedar in obedience. She is really good at most things like heeling, stays, whatever... but we've been having trouble with the dumbbell retrieve. I always thought that that would be the easiest exercise to teach her because she is CRAZY about fetching and toys and stuff. However, I've had a hard time getting her to understand that she can't mouth or drop the dumbbell like she would a toy. I talked to my friend Ariel--an excellent obedience trainer-- about it, and she recommended just having Cedar carry it around instead of trying to teach her "hold" "drop it" "take it" and all that stuff mechanically. So the day before yesterday I took the dumbbell and my clicker outside with Cedar and decided to give it a try.



It's working GREAT so far. Cedar seems to be understanding everything better, and we've even done some actual retrieves with her coming to front and sitting... without her dropping the dumbbell at my feet. She's been showing steady improvement over the past three days so I'm encouraged. Maybe we could even be ready for her CDX by fall... hmm...



And yes, she doesn't even have her CD yet. LOL. But I'd like to have her trained at least through CDX before we start trialing so we can whiz through instead of having to take another year off to train new exercises. width="420" Seems like a good plan...?



Moss is doing really well, too. I took him to the park yesterday by himself to work on his recall and ended up taking a ton of photos. Here's a couple:





In other news, we got a house!!!! It has a huge yard and is 3x as big as the one we are living in now, so that will be fantastic. The neighborhood is miles above the one we are in now and is pretty close to Boise State, too.

The view up the street:


I'm really excited to move in and get more furniture and stuff. I think Cedar especially will appreciate the extra room. She feels really claustrophobic in here.