We had a grand time this morning. I'm getting bored with working 3 seconds at a time trying to get Syn to sit without tap dancing, so we moved on and worked on her stays when we were nearly done. That was a lot more fun.

We started cold at the beginning of Level 2, tested out what we could and trained a bit on what we couldn't.

We polished off all 5 behaviours in L2 Zen, including the Comeafters. Not a big deal - Zen R Us. She's very, very good at Zen.

Also went through L2 Focus, which was a bit of a surprise, and I didn't want to dwell on it because she was tap dancing a bit while she was staring in my eyes, but she did get the 10 seconds of eye contact easily.

L2 Come - another one of her basic great behaviours. No problems.

L2 Down - we worked on it a bit. We've got Steps 1, 3, and 5. Step 2 is staying down for 1 minute, and 4 is staying down for 1 minute with me 20 feet away. The 20 feet aren't a problem - in fact she's better with me further away than she is with me up close - but she's not ready for more than 15 seconds without rolling back and forth (the down version of tap dancing), swinging her head around, and generally thinking too hard about it.

To work on this, I started her out on a big cushy mat. She had no problem giving me 1 minute of silent body and mind on the mat. We did that a few times, then tried it on the floor, and that's how we got up to 15 seconds on the floor. We might have been able to go further, but she was doing very well and I didn't want to push her.

L2 Sit - again, the duration is a problem. We got Steps 1, 4, and 5. 2 and 3 are a 30-second stay and a 1-minute stay. I'm pretty sure she could have done them both, but I'm not going to ignore the foot movement. I seem to remember that I spent an afternoon once shaping her to shuffle her feet - bad, bad, bad idea. Won't do that again until she's 42 years old.

L2 Lazy Leash - sweet, no problem.

L2 Target - the same. She likes closing cabinet doors with her nose.

L2 Go to Mat - a foundation behaviour she obviously considers to be one of her… umm… foundation behaviours.

L2 Crate - I didn't expect a problem with this - it's taught as a Go to Mat with bars around the mat - and we didn't have any.

L2 Distance - here we had a momentary problem. I used a very small collapsible laundry basket as my "pole" and Syn wasn't listening when we started. She tried to retrieve it so we practised basket Zen for a minute or two. Then she tried to retrieve the llama harness that was in the basket, so we practised llama-harness Zen for another minute. Finally she realized it was supposed to be a pole, and went around it with no more trouble. When she had that, we went into another room and I asked her to go around a big crate, which she did without hesitation.

L2 Jump - we didn't test this one, as we were doing it last night in agility class.

That's as far as we got, but we covered a LOT of ground. Next time we'll start on L2 Relax.