Workshop

I learned a lot watching the masters workshop in the morning. I saw some different ways of looking at courses and some things I should try and teach Venus.
When it got time to do the novice workshop I had to run Clover. Now, I really do love Clover and she is a very special dog to me. She helped me with most of what I know about agility. But I generally do not enjoy running Clover as much as I do Venus. Clover is slower and I have to convince her to come on along the contact obstacles. She doesn't fear them and they are usually her favorite things to do so she enjoys taking her time on them. She also tends to leave me and what I'm doing to go do whatever she feels like. Clover has run out of the ring at the end of a course before and likes to pick and choose random obstacles.
Rhonda's feelings on her were that she likes staring at herself in a mirror. In a lot of ways that does describe Clover. It is what makes her such a great conformation dog. Clover's conformation career has been amazing; Akc Ch at 7 months old in 4 weekends with a 5pt major win, Can Ch in 4 days undefeated with 3 BOB wins, multiple BOB and group placements, and two Samoyed national specialty AOMs.
So basically Clover was kinda blowing me off on the first run. It wasn't unexpected between her personality, silliness lately, and the fact she hasn't really been worked since the national in Sept. The longer we were there the better she was doing, until she heard gun shots in the distance. Clover has always had noise issues and we have worked through a lot of them. I don't let her go hide just because of a scarey noise and she learns to work through it. I remember a long time ago deciding to reward her with going in a tunnel to get her mind off of the noises at Beth's house. Clover went in, and didn't come out. She was good yesterday though and worked through it until I was done. She was a little unfocused but continued to work. On our next turn she was even for stressed and I had a feeling that she would make a run for the car. Sure enough after we ran once and headed towards the start to go again she took off for the car. Beth was prepared and grabbed her and brought her back. Clo wasn't happy but did work for me the rest of the time.
I think I could have gotten more from working with Venus but it really did help me realize what a good agility dog Venus is turning out to be. I'll have a video of the newest thing Venus is learning in a little while.
Brandy