Couple of quick videos while I'm home sick from work:
Stella and Pongu doing recall drills at the dog park (and Pongu twirling around unnecessarily because he is a big showoff who likes to show off).
Stella's recall is good enough that I can call her from the opposite end of the park past other dogs who are playing, but not good enough to break her out of play if she's already engaged (unless she's playing with Pongu, because he will immediately break off play to run over when called, and then she has nobody to play with. I toyed with the idea of making a clip of this because it looks much more impressive, but that would be cheating; it's not her recall that's so great, it's his). She is pretty consistent about coming to me, probably around 80% response rate, but doesn't exactly bolt over at top speed.
So not a SUPER AWESOME FANTASTICO recall, but not half bad for the amount of practice she's had. I wouldn't expect to get a break-out-of-play recall for another month or so (and from what I've seen, most dogs never get there...). For the time she's had, she's doing really well, and while her adopters will certainly want to continue working to improve her performance, she's got a decent foundation.
And here we are doing leash walking drills in the hallway. Plz ignore my elephant butt sweatpants and general raggedy appearance. Like I said: home sick from work.
Out on the street Stella isn't as reliable about maintaining position and swerves from side to side occasionally, and she is still shy and prone to flinching if someone makes a loud noise or moves suddenly, but her performance is continually improving and she's getting pretty good at the stop/sit when the handler stops.
She's small and easy to walk anyway, which is one of the reasons I left Heel as such a low priority on her basic commands list, but there ain't a lot left on the Obedience 101 syllabus, so this is what we're doing now.
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