It's been a few months since I posted any training logs, so here's what I've been doing with Kiltie over the last few months. We've settled on 2 on 2 off for contacts, Kiltie goes down to touch the target with her nose. She runs to end of the plank and drops like a sack of spuds with her nose on ground. With A-Frame on full height she barely touches the contact zone with her feet when she goes down, but as long as her feet are still touching I'm allowing this.

We've moved our jump training on as well, she can successfully read a front cross from me, she's good at reading false turns, we're doing pull-thoughs, push throughs and serpentines with success. In all cases I started with 1 jump, broke it down to the smallest part I could think of. ie, for a pull through the first step was go over the jump and turn back towards me, then I threw the ball. We then added criteria as we progressed.

I went to a seminar a couple of months ago, we did a lot of work on a double box, and Kiltie did really well. We moved on to a course, which was when I realised that we had a major problem. She would do 3-8 obstacles. And then when the course opened to an open space, and required a 270 deg turn. Then she would power out of the course looking for the ball that she thought I should have thrown.

When Kiltie came to us, as a re-home, she had a love of chasing balls, her next level of reward was chasing birds, followed by food (food is well below birds and tennis balls). She had no interest in other toys, this left me little choice for rewards. I went with the ball because I needed a good reward and I didn't want to remove the thing she loves the most, early in our relationship.

So... moving on, 4 weeks ago I put all balls away, I bought a tug toy, and I put all agility obstacles away. For the first week she barely sniffed the toy. The second week, she would tug sometimes, and it was sometimes vigorous, but she would break off to chase a bird, or chose to run around the backyard looking for a ball instead.

I suspect part of the problem is that she doesn't value interaction with me enough, so I got some good treats and walked around the backyard, after a few minutes she walked beside me to see what I was doing, the moment she looked at me I clicked and treated, this has developed to the stage (1 week later) the she now walks around with me, in an excited state, even when birds fly past. Five days ago, I also got out the tug toy, after 30 sec of "heelwork" I stopped and held the tug toy, when she sniffed I clicked and treated. We quickly moved this onto putting her mouth around the toy (but still not holding it yet). 3 days ago, I did this while our old beardie was out, he grabbed the toy and tugged. When he'd finished, Kiltie grabbed the toy and tugged for about 3 seconds , so I clicked and treated. The last 2 days she has grabbed and tugged reasonably hard for a few seconds. It's at the stage where I'm almost ready to add a command.

Training starts back at the club later this week, I'm keen to see how it goes.