Here are two videos that I took today; both are unedited.

Good stuff happens!  Questionable stuff happens!  And it’s all just fine; I’ve got a happy baby dog who is learning and trying hard to work in public.  But he’s still a baby – just about eight months old.  He can barely hold himself still and that is normal and to be expected.  That’s the least of my worries.

There are two videos here.

In the first video, I think the most important thing in his heeling is to notice how much work I do “to the right”.  This is because Brito is prone to lagging.  Which doesn’t mean I don’t work at all to the left, but most of my time is spent encouraging him to drive forwards.  Signals are coming along but we have a ways to go before he settles in.  We do a few dumbbell retrieves and then he does something that makes me very happy; he gets the dumbbell on his own and brings it to me.  Finally we do some toy play, some fronts, and an attempt or two at jumping.  The session ends when he runs off to see a new dog.  Running off is a fact of life with a young dog with many interests; I left that in too.  That will work itself out with time; it’s already much better than it used to be!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXAPElxmJHY

The second video is working on a stand for exam, hand signals under distraction, directed jumping and some fronts.  Here is that video:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vkz_D7tiIs

Brito’s current stage is my favorite – learning a ton of stuff and having a wonderful time.

In my next blog, I’ll try to post the videos for Lyra on the same day, so you can see what she’s up to as well.