Platinum training commences

Nice early start to the day and we arrived farrrr too early thanks to my being worried about not being able to find where we needed to be, but we had a nice little walk in the field with Jo and her terrier boy, Boots.

Bran was absolutely thrilled to see his "classmates" again and spent an inordinately large amount of time bouncing on the end of his lead and wuffing at everyone. Marvellous way to start!

Jo, in her wisdom, has decided to teach us following the Kennel Club Pre-beginners obedience and has tentatively suggested that our little team could enter a show being held in Birmingham in August. No pressure then!! I did put forward Bran's name as team mascot rather than have us carrying any responsibility to achieve something....

Jo then went on to teach us the start of a competition obedience 'stand' - having the dog leaning against your thigh, with their head right up and chin on your body whilst you are in position as if you are about to take a step forward; a 'sit' - having the dog sat tight to your leg, again with the head right up and chin resting on your body; and a 'present' - having the dog recall to a tight 'sit' in front with their chin resting on your body as they look up at you, ready to be sent into a 'finish'.

Bran decided that all of this was a load of tosh and what he would most like to do is roll in the long wet grass. Gorgeously frustrating is this boy of mine!

The 'stand' and 'sit' were practically non-starters. With the 'present' we were supposed to be rewarding for any little movement of the feet towards to bring the dogs in tighter than they are used to. Bran lost the plot as I tried to lure him forwards a little. He offered a 'sit', 'stand', 'down', 'paw', 'roll over', 'bark' and a leap into my arms, but never moved his backside off of the spot if I put him into a 'sit'.

Jo then decided to give the dogs a rest from all of their hard work (!?!) by teaching them a new trick. She suggested a 'bow' and I was a bit worried that Bran's elbows wouldn't let him bend enough to do it, so she suggested he try a 'beg'. Lo and behold, Bran LOVES doing 'bow' and picked it up very very quickly. Although, Jo also showed me how to start teaching a 'beg' and he quite enjoyed that too!! Clearly, this dog is built for tricks and not obedience ;o)

We then went to start an exercise which will encourage the dogs to fetch any identified object. I breathed a sigh of relief with this one as Bran knows 'fetch it' well and will happily fetch anything once I've identified it as an allowable object for him to put his mouth on. As expected, he happily mouth targetted the rubber ring we were given, then waited quietly as I threw the ring on, then happily bombed off to 'fetch it' and then happily threw it at my feet. We are supposed to be building up to delivering to hand which is something I've been trying to teach him for ages so this should be fun :o) We then swapped toys and once he'd had a quick mouth of the new toy, Bran happily trotted off to 'fetch it' for me.

Homework is to polish the competition 'stand', 'sit' and 'present' positions, advance the 'bow' (although we may try to work on 'beg' too) and have the dogs fetch 10 different items, so it should be a VERY interesting week ;o)

I then drove my car off of a concrete section that had a higher kerb than I thought for, thereby eliciting scary banging noises from the underneath of my car as we dismounted, but we'll not go into that.....