Day 4

An emotional morning session where half the room were in tears talking about putting dogs to sleep. Then we had a rescue dog come that was reactive to people ever we watched from the other end of the arena. Interesting seeing his change in body posture and movement as the session progressed.

In the afternoon Breagh came into the arena again and we worked on the double butterfly line to get her walking on her haunches more and to work on moving her through feel and stoppimg her through feel. It was hard not to pull which is what we end up doing when they pull. We got a lovely stop through feel and then I fed her treats from high objects and she was twitching through the area in her back that is immobile. I noticed when taking her back to the camper she had a shuffle of her feet and a think before jumping in and I think it was because her body felt different to her so she wasn't sure how to move for the jump. I'm enjoying that so little can change so much about the balance of the dog. She also relaxed more again with the other dogs around her.

The instructor did tell us that the way we are learning t touch is not linear but lateral and that it can make you a bit crazy until you get it. I'm thinking telling us this day 1 might have been helpful!!