Running Contacts - Lesson ONE

I debated back and forth if I wanted to sign up for Silvia's Running Contacts course. In the end I signed up at the last minute, before the class started. After taking an online class from someone else...I have realized that I like the way Silvia teaches, you get a LOT of personal interaction/feed back from her. She watches your videos and gives you feedback. The website is set up, so it is easy to follow along with your classmates and the class. There are a LIMITED number of people in the class, which develops a class 'bond', as much as you can in an online class. She does NOT try to up sell you on her courses. This is a big PLUS for me. I HATE to be upsold. If I have already paid for a class - why are you trying to squeeze more money out of me? Oh, yeah... because you can. Silvia DOES NOT DO THAT!!! In fact she gives things away! Everyone that takes the puppy/tricks class gets a free download of one of her videos.

Soooo that's my rant on that. I have MUCH more I could say, but it's not worth it. Let's just say Silvia's classes are awesome and she is a great PATIENT teacher. She is nice. At least I think so :)

That's the reason I signed up for the RC course. Tibby loves to run on her plank and we have fun training. I learn something new in every class we take, so why not take another one?



The first part of the first lesson was to tape the dog running at full speed. After last week-end, when Tibby ran away from me, I wasn't sure if we were even going to be able to do the first part of the first lesson!! BUT it turned out to be really good for us.

I took Tibby to a baseball field. She had her long line on and we were able to practice. I think she had fun! I had a ton of fun, but my legs were so sore today!! It was really hard to run on the grass. Today I ran on the gravel/sand and it was so much easier! But it was also easier for Tibby to run faster than me.

Today we went back to the park again and worked on call once games. Tibby did OK, but she gets busy sniffing and ignores me sometimes. I'm not sure EXACTLY how to fix this. She did try to leave the fenced in area once. She was following a scent and found an opening in the fence, BUT the long line stopped her.

Yesterday I was impressed with her focus. I'm not sure if it was the hotdogs or the chasing games, but she did better yesterday than today.  Although, today there were 2 dogs in another baseball field (it's a complex of 8 or 9 fenced in fields) and she did a good job of ignoring them or at least turning back to me after looking over at their field when they were barking.

Yesterday she did pretty good waiting for a release when I walked away from her. It was like a start line stay, but with just running.

Edited to add:  I forgot to say at the end of the video I included some funny clips.  Like for example....Tibby's Superman impression.  Poor Catty........  AND the first time ever I have been able to tape Tibby barking.  That's not even as mean as she can sound.  She's scary!!