This past Monday we took Tarra to some mini agility run thrus a few hours away. I brought her absolute favorite motivators: destroyed Kong Wubba, destroyed stuffed toy, soft treats, cheese, and cat food. She'll take a toy over treats anyday, she's really not that enthusiastic working for food unless we're shaping something. BUT I always bring treats because I know that she'll take treats even if she's stressed. Tugging is a little bit harder when she's stressed.

First Run: She completely ignored me and sniffed this amazing smelly dirt that she's never seen. Then she sniffed her way out of the ring, lol. So we tried with her on leash, and I got her to do a few more obstacles. But she was refusing my treats.

Second Run: Time to bring out the big stuff: cat food. Talk about a transformation! No sniffing, focused, no refusals, did a course of 10 obstacles. She never gets cat food so now I save it for trials/run thrus.

The next three runs just got better and better. Off leash, focused, and on her last run I didn't have the cat food in my hand, we ran the course, and I hooked up her leash and we left the ring and immediately she got a huge jackpot of cat food. :)

In total we only used 1 can of cat food. Who knew.

Overall I consider this a huge breakthrough! This is a dog that is easily stressed in new locations, and here she is running a course with no motivator, in a new location, indoors,on a new flooring, and plenty of distractions!!

I'm SO proud of my baby dog!! (yes i consider her a baby)

here's the link to the vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2NzigzQ1kU

I know we still have ALOT of work to do, but we've got a few months to fix those problems and more fun matches to come! :)

Tarra enjoying her treats:

First of all, Tarra and Halli. We've been letting them run together in our fence under supervision. They play and run alot, but we notice that when Tarra's done playing, Halli STILL wants to play. Sometimes there's a few growls, but nothing too big. Tarra is basically the dominant one with Amy, but we were interested to see how she would react to a dog 15 lbs. heavier than her. They ended up getting in a fight, pretty quick no injuries. Definitely something we expected, and looked as if Tarra's just trying to hold her position. Later the same day, we let them loose inside after introduction on leash. Pretty good, until, once again Halli wanted to keep playing, sparked another fight. We seperated them, Halli had a small cut but she was fine. I think this is okay as long as we are there to seperate it once it happens, because I know Tarra has to prove her place, because..... that's Tarra, she's the boss! LOL! Halli and Tarra will definitely get better, after all, Amy and Tarra were a much bigger challenge, and look at them now! :) I think our biggest goal is to get Halli really tired before letting her interact with our other dogs. And Amy, really doesn't give a crap about Halli, as long as she doesn

On Tarra's training:
Just going to work more with speed and drive without obvious reinforcers, and working in many new locations.

Halli's training:
She's such a good girl! Ran her first sequences last week and did amazing, I'll be working on a video, so look out!

Thanks for reading!