New CDX for Spryte!

I am so thrilled to announce that Spryte finished her Companion Dog Excellent (CDX) title on Friday at the Red Deer Show.  She finished with a score of 196.  We lost a point for barking, which knocked us out of the ribbons. Oh well, the perils of running a Sheltie in Obedience!
     I'm just happy to have it done.  There were so many times over the winter were I thought it would never happen.  Her dumbbell issues always seemed to be getting in the way.  She didn't want to hold it, she would throw her head back, roll it around in her mouth while slinking back on her hind end, or she would just stand over it and not pick it up.  We had a whole plethora of dumbbell issues.  And it's not that she has ever had a bad experience with the dumbbell, I have used positive methods from day one with her. It's just she is not a natural retriever and the whole idea of fetching and HOLDING something in her mouth was her idea of sheltie torture. 
    We slowly worked through the issues with tons and tons of positive reinforcement for dumbbell work.  The two biggest training tools I used to improve the exercise (I can't really say fixed, because it is not perfect and will take a lifetime of work to maintain it) was resistance work and placement of reinforcement. 
   The resistance work involved trying to gently pull the dumbbell out of her mouth, if I could pull it out then no reward for Spryte. If she held on to it and resisted my pressure then she got a "yes" and a cookie.  This taught her to hold it tighter in her mouth and not roll it, otherwise I could pop it out and Spryte would miss out on a reward.  Very upsetting for a dog that loves food so much!
   The other tool I used was to always pull the dumbbell low and towards me, so that she was holding it almost against my leg and then I would reward in the same position. This taught her to keep her head forward and low, which directly interfered with her natural preference to hold her head up and back to roll the dumbbell around in her mouth.  Simple training theory: Teach a desired behaviour that directly conflicts with the unwanted behaviour and suddenly the problem is fixed! (ie teach the dog to sit for petting and you no longer have a jumping on people problem). 
   So now we can get back to training multiple skills again without the stress of an upcoming trial.  We will get back to training for Utility, definitely continue with our Nosework training, but mostly we can focus on agility again.  I really haven't done too much agility this winter with my obedience goals taking center stage.  I enjoyed the break from the sport and now I'm feeling refreshed and excited to get back at it. 
    Infact we had our first serious agility practise this morning, working on the skills from the Justine Davenport foundation course.  It went well and I got some great work from Spryte.  Backsides of jumps with me leaving,  multiple wraps around jumps, threadles and some really nice flappy tappy (running dog past obstacles). I'll have to record one of our training sessions soon and post it on here.
Now off to do some nosework!