A day out.

Yesterday, Luna and I spent the day traveling and playing at a dog training school 130 kilometers away.

We took the train. 3 changeovers, 2 hours travel time. Luna was a star. She loves traveling, she knows exactly where the train station is and she leads me there. She hops in and out of trains easily and boldly goes up and down open stairs. There were lots of other dogs traveling, and once, upon exiting the train (Luna always goes ahead of me) Luna ended up nose to nose with 2 strange dogs. None cared.

Normally, when waiting for trains, Luna is busy scanning the environment; looking for trains as she slowly circles around me. I decided I'd try to calm her down a bit. 'Luna, Assis.' She sat. Cookies. She got up sometimes, but sat right back down when she noticed there was no need. Then, when I waited too long to deliver the next cookie, she DOWNED! Yay, more cookies!!! In fact, she was so comfy in her down that I decided not to pay for sitting anymore. So if she got up, I just waited for another down and paid again. She was nicely over on one hip, looking around calmly. Cool!

When we arrived at our destination, we had a blast. The weather was wonderful; warm enough for the humans to be warm outside, and cool enough for the dogs not to be hot. We had our dogs cross in front of us to the other side, something Luna and I do daily on our walks. She was lovely. I did discover that we need to do some right-hind-end awareness; if I asked her to cross to the left, she swung her but around nicely, but if I asked for a cross to the right, she went across in a straight line and then waited for me to catch up.

Time for a break. Whenever we were not working with our dogs, I had Luna on her mat. At the start of the day she was tied to the fence, but halfway through I stopped bothering, because she was perfect. She stayed on the mat even if I went out of sight. She was calm. She was quiet. It was great. I learned that I have pretty good aim.

After the break it was time for some real action. We got to do a mini-agility course. Jump through three tires, and take a tunnel. Luna and I had a blast. She's never done tires, but she never missed one and we RAN the whole course, 3 times. When she came out of the tunnel, we played a game of tug. What fun!

Then, we all demonstrated our progress with stacking rings and putting toys away. A good way to see if the dogs really understood the task and could do it in this new environment. All dogs (7 of them) were successful!

On the way home, there was a dog-reactive dog on the train. Luna, again, was cool as can be.

The coolest thing ever was that I had Luna on her collar the whole time we were at the school, and she didn't pull AT ALL. She touched the end a few times, but before I could do anything she'd bounced back and fixed the problem. Wow! Loose leash in a new environment.

A LL walk.

This morning I decided to take Luna for a long walk on her collar, which means the leash MUST be loose.

She was a star. Look At That when passing other dogs, even in close quarters with Luna on the side of the other dog. Lots of connection, attention and joy.

Only time she really pulls is when her nose gets the better of her. Back up, she releases pressure, click and send her back to sniff. Once is enough not to let her tighten the leash again. We had about 4 moments like that. Part of this issue is that I have a tendency to follow her when she sniffs, in which case I'm telling her that pulling when she smells something is OK. That happened the first time she took off sniffing. Oops. This is clearly a habit I need to work on. After that first time, I was paying attention and we worked on 'you can't sniff over there unless the leash is loose.'

Also tossed treats way out ahead of us several times while walking, and she did better than I expected. Of about 10 tossed treats, she started to pull twice, and immediately came off the pressure when I took a step back. Other than that I could walk her right up to the treat, and she wouldn't go for it until I clicked. Cool!

Something I realized today; when I walk her in a harness, that's Luna's cue that I am not In The Game and thus she isn't In The Game. When walking her on a collar, I AM In The Game and thus, so is she. Hello, duh!

Also, I learned that her LL is better than I thought; I don't walk her much on a collar because I think working on LL is hard work, but actually we had a great time and it wasn't nearly as brain-consuming as I thought.

Hopefully, that means I'll be working on her LL skills more often. We definitely still need work on approaching cookie ladies and doggie friends.

Overall conclusion; this was FUN!