It was a good training night tonight, dogs seemed to be a bit on edge but settled nice while I was teaching. Then I was able to work the 3 young ones.
Tonight Java (11 month old malinois female) worked in an obedience group class offlead for the entire 1 hr class. It was an advanced group so it was a good one to test her, but she made no mistakes, no visiting or nervous snooping. She was pretty relaxed and handled herself well. So that was a success for us, little tear in my eye - my weirdo nervy reactive puppy is all grown up. She had pretty good heeling, nice and attentive, didn't drop her head at all, but we need to fix up our turns. I think we need to work on clarifying what she targets because the issue is a hesitation I think from some confusion. She went down on the long sit.. but it ended up being a realllly long sit (6-7 minutes at least), probably longer than she was mentally ready for as I don't work her in group class every week. But good experience for us overall
With Wiley (2.5 year old malinois male) I did some work on his french ring hurdle. He is really (finally) working hard to pick up his feet to clear this. In French Ring 1 (first level with jumps), the bar is set at 1.1 meters (~43 ") for full points, and they have to clear it twice. I also had a friend around to rehearse food refusal (dog must refuse food thrown at him in an out-of-site down stay - in the rules it actually says if the food lands in his mouth, they must spit it out to get their points). He did good, didn't budge or sniff. Then they have to heel through the thrown food upon return. Needless to say he won his much-coveted ball on that exercise.
Slice (5 month old toller female) worked in an earlier group obedience class, since it is my friend's class, I use the setting to do as I please with the puppies I raise, just focus and engagement. She was challenged tonight but had many many many good decision moments. This girl is a bundle of friendly energy and wants to visit every dog and person who notices her. I really really appreciate her effort to contain herself. She did some group stays with a dropped leash, and then recalls, and I tried a formal one and she nailed her front and finish. Super pup! When the class was switching over, we stayed in the room and worked on 2o2o on a box and sends around a cone to the box. One of the harder things for her is committing to the "obstacle" (wrapping around traffic cone here) which involves turning away from something she really wants to see after running full blast towards it. It was a challenging thing to ask but she did have good success.