Chispa is six months old now. I don’t have any current stats on her weight or height; they are what they are. I know she’s under 19.75″, because that’s how tall Jester is, and she’s shorter than he is by a wide margin. Her last recorded height was about a month ago, and that was just shy of 17″. She’s got some growing to do! Her mom is just shy of 20″, and her dad is about 21.5″, so I’m sure she’ll be “big enough”. Plus, she’s going to be whatever height she’s going to be, no need to obsess on it, really.
For the past several days, really, I haven’t done much NEW with Chispa. I’ve continued with her go to mat behavior, because I’m going to use it to train her running contacts. And, I’m working quite a bit on having her go forward to a toy from collar restraint. Or, to a cone. Or, to ANYthing really, because her default when I let go of her after getting excited is to turn back to interact with ME. That’s great, but not ultimately super useful for agility.
She DOES continue to be pretty agile all on her own, and has learned to sequence in my living room:
Yes, it’s a little rough around the edges, but she’s pretty nimble, I’d say.
This morning, I was scrolling through FB, looking at training videos, and I happened upon a video of somebody’s 6 month old puppy, with a very nice sit stay. Chispa  has NO sit stay within the context of agility training. She’ll sit for her food, and she’ll sit for a treat, and she’ll sit for a toy, and she’ll sit to be let out of her crate, but none of those involve her sitting while I move away. And, I’m totally ok with that. She’ll need a sit stay sooner or later, but as long as I can get a head start on her by sending her around a cone or to a tunnel or her mat or something, I’ll do that – those are all behaviors that she needs to learn anyway, and the sit stay itself will (fingers X) be simple enough to transfer in to agility. Note that I didn’t say EASY – just, SIMPLE.
This week, I’ll probably stick with more of the same – continuing with cone work, and then a bit of wing wrapping a la Linda Mecklenburg’s Mastering Jumping Skills Foundation Flatwork, and her mat work, AND her running contact foundation work.
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