18 August 2008

A Practice Roll

So Molly and I went for our second practice roll. It went so well! The traffic was really bad but she ignored it. She ignored the big trucks, all the cars, even the two scooters we had to pull over to let pass us on the bike path (they're the small motor scooters, so allowed on the bike path). I'm using the reflective posts along the road as markers and went one further than last time. I'm not sure how far apart they are. We practiced stopping and she'd stop right away. She also did great when I turned around. We were also rolling along beside the horses and she did fine ignoring them too. She really likes to watch the horses, so that's a great sign.

I think my rope and coil setup is working, but I will see about attaching a short piece of rope of the right length instead of having to rerig her rope leash every time. The coil helps keep the leash from sagging too much and going under the wheel but the rope keeps her short so she can't stretch it and get too far away from me. I'll need to continue with the rope until I am sure she is really really solid in all public access situations.

I also "dropped" my hat at one point and had her collect it and give it to me. She was able to concentrate on that despite the traffic.

So I'm very proud of Miss Molly and feel like we are making real progress towards the day she can be declared SD instead of SDIT.

5 comments:

Laura said...

Sounds like Molly is really doing well (sorry to hear about the eating difficulties, though). How long have you been training her? Is she your first SDIT?

Bex and the Bookends said...

Thanks Laura. We've been doing service-oriented training since February. I started teaching her to pick things up for me to help me around the house but as my health got worse decided to go for public access and she seems to be handling it well.

Molly is both my first SD of any sort and our first border collie. :-)

Rockstar and Kipp said...

She sounds like she is doing great. Keep up the good work Molly!

Samantha ~ Holly and Zac ~ said...

Sounds good Bex, she is doing great. :-)

Bex and the Bookends said...

Thanks!