This morning out at the park with Kizmet managed to work some directionals in a new environment and the stop with the ball thrower largely with success. Also managed a short fresh hard surface track to remind her how that goes. If I get some jump training in this evening will have covered all the growing list of training goals today.

Generally she is good at halt at a distance but in a big open field when a kong is thrown in the grass she becomes unreliable at stopping the chase. So I will work on more of a routine and build to it. First up closer in and alternate reward away from the thrown toy. Ideally would be throwing low value and holding high value but she pretty much values anything she thinks could be a toy - which is most things. Here she did well so will try a more open field and more distance tomorrow maybe. I need to get back to agility cues and exercises but I do tend to be easily distracted. Also had thought to work more hard surface tracking with some structured decoys and cross tracks on grass so maybe not tomorrow...

Weaves before dinner, Tricky entry she gets wrong the first time. Dinner bowl off to the side rather than ahead is a big distraction and the toys are challenging for her.

Kizmet has a pretty good trials sendaway/redirect and the training/tests for USAR are built around the FEMA work where they move between platforms. In real life and in Advanced operational tests on a rubble pile however there are no markers or platforms and I often have to stay in one place. Getting a dog to move back/forward/left/right is then more of a challenge. So today tested where we are at in an open field. Left/Right not bad when needing to move further back directly away it gets tricky. Then tried on small piles (wood not rubble) and better but will need to build more distance (video), Have tried fading markers to small ones and using dropped toys/small bowls. Anything having small rewards out there can cause sniffing/hunting behaviour (especially in a spaniel) which is not ideal as leads to circling/quartering rather than clean go outs. Rewards all from me can lead to forward creep and a reluctance to go far out. So today was back to the ball thrower to deliver the ball out there when complete. Seems to still be the best compromise but will keep thinking how to communicate directionals without platforms, markers or lasers to guide them. A strong understanding of some sort of a keep going signal would be useful but not something I have trained before. More thinking required.

Have not posted since June but have decided to try and make use of the summer weather and Christmas break to take a look at my basic agility and hoopers cues. So today have started the list and broke out the weaves and a couple of jumps for some warmup. In my quiet time have still been training and we passed our USAR operational assessment and so are now one of 8 dog teams in the country who are on call for live find search post disaster. Deployments in New Zealand are rare (only major cyclones and earthquakes) so hopefully never needed.