Right now, I see the sit-stay and the recall as the two biggest problems we have for our upcoming shows. I've been thinking about what I might do about both.

After struggling with stays in Novice, Molly has been fairly stable on stays, at least until she decided to go down at our last match. I think she's doing it because she's left in a lot of situations where she is on a more informal "wait here" sort of stay, so now, if the attention isn't focussed she assumes she can just go down and relax and wait.

The stay is a harder problem and in class we'll try following June's suggestion of having Rich ignore Molly and then nail her if she goes down. If she does break I think I would want to do it again right afterwards to help beat it into her hard head. In the meantime, I think I'm going to work more on stays at home and at school. It won't be the same as a trial of course, but maybe I can convince her she's being ignored and then sneak back and nail her. Getting "tricked" like that seems to get her to concentrate better than anything else. Weird child.

At Dayton we'll see how she does. She was a rock there the last time, but if she breaks, they won't mind my correcting her. You can bet I'll be watching closely.

As to the recalls, she has been coming slower and slower, even though I almost never drop her anymore. I've decided to work her on the flexi, but to drop her about a 1/3 of the time even then, and use the leash to keep her snappy regardless. (I still won't drop her very often off leash, though.) I think with her it works better to meet a problem head on (subtle she aint). She's not afraid or worried, she's trying to figure out the game, and so far coming slowly has given her the most control.

I tried it several times this afternoon at school in the hall after school and she was fast every time on the flexi, even though in the middle I dropped her twice at full speed. I tried to pop her with the flexi, but only managed to land one mild pop, she beat me every other time. Then I took the flexi off and she was still noticably faster than she was last night, coming in at a medium trot.