R and E dogs

Most of mine are E dogs. I have one R dog and she is not nearly as much fun to run. Some started out R dogs, but was able to create E dogs over time.

 

Justice and Ember are Rs. I am sure Justice would be an E if I had had a clue about what I was doing. He is amazingly confident in himself and absolutely trusting of medespite how he was handled and trained. Ember is the dog that taught me I had better change my ways or nothing was going to come from training her. Ember will need be an E but she is less of an R than she used to be.

Diva and especially Birch are E dogs. Diva was a rogue missile as a young dog. She drove me crazy as I couldn't control her. I was told to slow her down. My response was to change instructors. Best thing I every did or I would have made another R dog. Birch trained differently from day 1. Birch thinks(no knows) he is a Champion. Now if I can uphold my end of the team. E dogs are much more fun to run.

 

Building confidence. Confidence and obstacle focus. An obstacle focused dog with a lot of confidence is more likely to drive to obstacles and not stay close and watch the handler as much. I always want my dogs to think they are right and not be questioning.
Ideally they will eventually be balanced, but would rather have to rein in an obstacle focused confident dog by training a bit more handler focus than have a slow dog too busy staring at me and pulling off too easily because either I have taught it that or it is unsure.

 

Honey is very much an R dog. I have to be right there with her or I hear about it. She also doesn't like turns and will NQ me if I try to turn her. Talk about having to run the outside sometimes to please a sheltie...


Ruutu is a mix of both. He definitely runs E a lot more than R, but I think that's just the puppy in him still. Occasionally he'll run R, especially in the weave poles since he's still learning them. I gotta work on saying my cues faster for him though... I'm used to Honey way too much

 

One of each here as well Cosmo is definitely an R dog and Stormy's definitely an E dog. Teaching Cosmo to Get Out and Go on was a real chore, with storm Go On is definitely not an issue although GET OUT can still be at times, I always have to worry about Off course dummy jumps with her and be right on it or it's too late.