continued

After church Sunday we bid farewell to Dan and Allison. We spent the afternoon tidying up the house a bit for our Superbowl party. We had invited several couples from our Sunday School class as well as some other friends and we had a total of 10 people. We had a great time watching the game and visiting. Sara created a Superbowl Bingo game with prizes and we made chili dogs. The chili dogs weren't a big hit (I had 2, but not too many other folks partook). Although we had little allegiance to either team we cheered for the Giants as the underdogs.

Monday it was back to the work routine. Sara received a call just before 7 am to come in as a sub so she was back at work as well. I was supposed to have an orientation flight with the flying club at work but it was very windy so we rescheduled for next week. I am planning to do ground school and take the FAA exam for my private pilots license. No plans at this point to do all the flight training but having the ground school will be good experience. We also had our first obedience lesson with Miele out at Paw Power Agility. I was not going to be able to go since I was going flying but since it was canceled I went along.
Miele did a fantastic job and was the star student, at least for the first half of class. There were three dogs in the class (usually there will be four but one was not there). The other two were a very young aussie puppy and a somewhat older aussie. They worked on target training (getting the dog to touch a target) first and Miele and Sara did very well. Then they worked on "rear end awareness" by using a stool to train the dog to be aware and move their back end without the front end. Miele was quick to put her front feet on the stool. Then she was the first to be able to pivot on the stool, keeping her front legs on the stool and moving her back legs around the stool in a circle. The trainer was impressed with how fast she learned.
Then the class worked on going through weave poles that were spaced such that they form two columns (Instead of weaving the dogs can just walk between the two lines of poles; as they get better the poles can be moved in so that the dog has to begin to weave). The trainer held Miele and Sara stood at the far end of the poles and called her. Miele did OK at this but was not as excited as the aussies. She is a little timid with new things like that. They worked on the weave poles for quite a while and Miele got a little better but seemed to get tired as the class wore on.
At the end they tried sending the dogs through the chute. This is a barrel with a sheet over the end that the dog has to run through. The trainer held Miele and Sara knelt at the sheet end and held it open so Miele could see. Miele wasn't fond of this but did come through a few times.
The pictures aren't too impressive because it was after dark and I was afraid the flash might distract the dogs.



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