Tuesday training

So today we had two different classes for the Gus man! He started off bright and early going out to Billie's to start his Control Unleashed (CU) class. Because this was a new environment for him, we basically worked on getting him to lay on his mat in a calm fashion for an entire hour. Boy was that challenging! He was hyper alert the entire time. Billie gave me some additional reading materials and explained how the class works. She also recommended that I try giving him peanut butter to help him learn to ignore everything around him. I smeared it on his nose and muzzle (her recommendation) and he pretty much ignored everything else for five minutes.

Homework: Start reading the book. Work on his calming and re-orientation to me at home in a non-stressful environment.

After spending the day at Val's while I went to work, I picked Gus up for the trek out to Debbie's facility for his next training session. We talked about his last (disastrous) visit to Top Notch and then his class at Billie's. Debbie showed me some basics of TTouch and she spent about 5 minutes performing it on Gus to see if he would relax. For the most part he does not yet relax when this is done to him. Then we worked on his jumping and his stays. We are having problems progressing on the jump work because the stay is stressing him out so much. Debbie also introduced the single jump work for me to work on at home with him. For the most part his focus was pretty off. Debbie was not sure if this was from the set back we had at his last visit there or if his brain was fried from the early morning session at CU Class. Either way we are going to try and limit his training sessions to 2 minutes next time we are there to see if that improves.

Homework: TTouch work at home. Single jump wraps & RX from 5, 10 and 20 feet all on the same side. Continue to work his send to pouch and jump grids at 6".