Kick-start

Rugby got some real work done as far as our sloppy parts are concerned. We have a plan to fix his occasional lagging, halts and just about everything else.

Heeling/Halts:
The lagging is just going to take a leash correction when he first starts to drop behind where I pop the leash forward. Today his about turns were a lot better today so I think that those will get better with time. For the halts, I changed the way I was walking. I am taking less steps in preperation for the halt and if his attention isn't on me, then I give a very gentle backward pressure on the leash so that he doesn't sit so forged. After those two things were changed by the third halt he was doing them well without my help. We will see if he can keep it up the next couple of days.

High Jump
We also practiced the retrieve over the high jump, which was good but we do need to practice having it thrown off center. I had been throwing it off center, but not over the jump and today it was brought to my attention that if I kept doing that I would mess up the retrieve on the flat. So we are changing that too. :p

Broad Jump
Broad jump still needs lot more repetitions. Today we stopped the breakaways when I send him over it, but he is still doing them on a leash.

Figure 8
We used Ellie, one of Rugby's girlfriends as a distraction to help tweak the figure 8 a little bit. It helped to speed him up in some parts and keep him close in others.

All in all it was a good day for Mr. Rugby. He was one tired boy after he practiced all that.
At the end of our training session today Rugby snatched his dumbell from me and danced around a bit and took it over so that Sanity and Margot could see it, then came back to make sure I was happy he had it, then went back to Sanity and Margot and finally I had him give it to me. <3 So cute.
Countdown till his next show: 11 days