More summer fun

Another pool party this evening after some work on go-outs and the UKC #2 glove exercise. So I put the hose in the pool, flipped the handle on the pump and this is what happens. Pretty typical. Digging at the water makes it come out of the hose faster.

But the shot I missed was Jamie stepping into the pool, grabbing the end of the hose and taking off with it, spraying water everywhere! Holy crap! Do you know how cold water is when it comes out of a 140-foot deep well?! Obviously I'm not filling the dogs' pool from our fancy-schmancy pay-for-every-gallon rural water line. It's straight out of Mother Earth and let me tell ya, Mother Earth is chillin'.

Anyway, there were a few exciting seconds when I was trying to keep me and the camera from getting soaked, while getting those hose away from Jamie before he turned it into a sprinkler. Although since it was a pretty warm evening, I have to admit it did feel kinda good.

Here's Phoenix, doing a lovely underwater retrieve for his ball. And people are amazed when my dogs beat the goldens and labs at their own game by retrieving mini pumpkins and gourds out of a tub full of water at the club Halloween party. Honestly, I do NOT train this. It's all the dogs' idea. They love their ball and the fact it's underwater doesn't stop them. By the time we have the Halloween party in October, they've spent all summer and early fall power-retrieving stuff out of water.

Training update: Phoenix's go-outs are good enough (at least in familiar places, need to take this show on the road) that I felt confident introducing the short go-out and sit we'll need for the second glove exercise in UKC obedience. He did a lovely job when I stopped him short, quick response with no hesitation and didn't even seem baffled about being told to sit before he got to the gate. He got a big reward for being so brilliant. Then I sent him on a full-length go-out. He ran exactly half way, turned and sat. Where's my cookie?

Sigh. Why run 50 feet for a cookie when you can run 25 feet and get the same cookie? This confusion stage is pretty typical. It's kinda like teaching the drop on recall and then the dog wants to drop on every recall, whether you ask him to or not. So we did a couple of long ones with me running him out to his "Go away!" spot, then a long one by himself, which he rocked, and we called it a night.