3000m...Day 123 of 133

last track meet for the season last night and I did the 3000m at 6pm...

there was light rain but no real breeze...it was nto cold which which was good...

tried to focus on not letting too big a gap build between Kathy and me but she still finished 20secs in front...a season's best for me by 20secs...

splits: 1:42 1:44 1:44 1:48 1:46 1:49 1:45 0:47

I ended up attending 6 meets over February-April for 4 x 3000m and 3 x 5000m:

• 20/2/14 13:38 3000m (Pennington series )
• 27/2/14 23:18.65 66.7% 5000m
• 06/3/14 13:26.04 67.8% / 13:33.29 67.1% 3000m (x2)
• 20/3/14 23:11.25 67.0% 5000m
• 27/3/14 22:45.30 68.3% 5000m
• 03/4/14 13:05.59 69.5% 3000m

from there it was off to the Belconnen Dog Obedience Club in Mitchell where Hodge will start his learning next week...this first session was an intake talk for all handlers doing the Beginners Companion Class...I think there were about 60 people there...for the following weeks this group will be broken up into 3 groups - puppies, adolescents and adults....

the talk - taken by Suze who is an instructor at the club and will be taking the puppies this session - covered the club, the rules, the volunteers, the training philosophy (positive reinforcement using a reward based method*) and the syllabus of the course...

there are four levels in dog obedience, starting with the Beginners then progressing through Bronze, Silver and Gold...the first three levels teach the basic requirements for a "well-mannered dog" with the fourth level teaching more advanced life skills...

there will be seven weeks of classes every Thursday night (regardless of the weather) except for the Thursday before Easter and this is the list of skills I am expected to teach Hodge:

• Play & Tricks
• Walking the dog (loose lead)
• Body positions (sit, down, maintaining positons next to handler)
• Come to handler
• Mealtime manners
• Self control for pats by strangers & greeting humans (not jumping etc)
• Self control when passing other dogs (not lunging or pulling)
• On your mat
• Fetch an object
• Self control at gates/doors (handler leads while dog waits)
• Good manners when in a group (group stays ~15secs)

*basically the dog is encouraged to exhibit behavious that we want and when it does it is rewarded, usually with a food treat or a toy...because the dog connects a pleasant experience with behaviour, it will be more likely to repeat that behaviour in the future...terms used in this sort of training are:

• rewards/motivators
• lure - anything that is used to enforce the dog to follow and perform a specific behaviour (something usually held in the hand)
• marker - a word or noise used to convey that what the dog just did is what you want (I'll be using a clicker)
• cue - a word or signal that indicates what behaviour we want it to perform
• generalisation - being able to perform in different locations and under different conditions

my homework this week is to find a tasty special treat for Hodge as his reward at the dog club (probably ham) and to "charge" up the clicker so that he knows to associate the sound of the clicker with the immediate positive action of being rewarded...the plan is to do this two or three times a day for 10-12 clicks...I'm looking forward to the fun times ahead!

Streaks:

• running = 124 days
• caching = 0

Countdowns:

• marathon = 10 days