Christmas and presents

Eventhough I have been very tired and exhausted this festive season but we have a peaceful Christmas with our family on Christmas Day and received a lot of wonderful presents from friends and family; one of them is this Manners Minder Remote Reward System.

I told Colin that I have lost all ideas/methods to "retrain" Saturn's contacts. He is now a Grade 6 dog and we simply cannot let this contact problem stopping us. I told him about this expensive Manners Minder Remote Reward System which might be able to help us, and guess what? It arrives on the 23rd December! I was so anxious to try this new toy and told him don't bother to wrap it up for Christmas (I probably is the least romantic person in the world!). I have been spending Christmas Eve playing with the new toy indoor. Saturn, Sizzle and Sing just loved it. As I planned to use this to train on the contacts with Saturn, I've got a piece of mat out to teach him (and Sizzle and Sing) to touch and then send him to the machine for the reward. It has been going on well, all boys are very keen.

Then, Christmas Day came and we didn't get time to use the machine at all.

On Boxing Day, we spent all morning clearing up the garden. By this time, the Willow tree has dropped all the leafs, so is about time to give the garden a good clear up. We got a pair of this Leaf Collector for Christmas, it is a brilliant tool to pick up the leafs.

We also washed down the Dog Walk, so it looks new. I've tried to move the DW to the middle of the garden. I know it makes the garden looks smaller and crowded but I couldn't care less, all I want to do this winter is to make sure I can train Saturn's contacts properly and hopefully he will get the idea what he should do in the ring.

I've got the Manners Minder out in the garden to start using it. I show Saturn the machine and he has picked up a few treats from the machine, so everything is ready to go. Unfortunately, this machine got me so frustrated, the remote didn't work every single time, sometimes it work and sometimes it was delay and sometimes it don't work at all. I was really frustrated with it. How can I teach Saturn if the reward is delay? Or the reward nevers arrive when he hit the correct position? At the end, I just gave up on it!

Colin tried to film me with my new toy, please turn down the volume, you don't want to hear my frustration voice: