Spa Night

Rugby got the whole treatment tonight. Bath, face-trim, nails and ears. I am hoping to get a couple pictures of him in his halloween costume tomorrow. It would be really nice if I could find a theme appropriate toy for him to carry. Hmmm... :p

He is doing well as far as open work is concerned. He took a nice big step in the right direction with the broad jump today. I noticed that he has started to pay attention to the arch he makes afterwards so that he gives me a straight front much more consistently. Since by this he told me he wanted to work on fronts, we did some recall drills and I think there was a light bulb there too. I think the problem he has is that he is not totally aware of his hind end, so even when he is sitting in front of me, he doesn't pay attention to the straightness of his back end. I think that changed today, but I am knocking on wood now and I will find out tomorrow. :p

We have another problem too. Rugby loves his dumbell. In an effort to prolong the time he has the dumbell on the retrieve on the flat, he runs out to it...but then only trots back to me. I was able to a few times speed him up on the return by running away. Problem with that is that after about three times he thought that was stupid of me and then just kept trotting. At the end of the training session we went back to it, but did it this time on the gravel and I think the sticks and leaves and things on the gravel slowed him down a bit (not to mention he was probably a littlr tired) and he trotted out and back. I can settle with that but it would nice to not have to put a stop to his enthusiastic retrieve.