Poor Neiko - I probably over worked him tonight but I knew we wouldn't have time for a walk, so the next best thing is training :)
First, I've been having a discussion on the disc dog forums about training Neiko for 100% return on toss and catch. They suggested back chaining to get the dog to pick up the frisbee then drop on command. So, tonight I dug out the clicker and worked on it. Neiko started with the nose touch and paw touch to the frisbee to get some treats - he's pretty good at that. Then I waited him out to see if he would figure out to mouth it. After many turns around the room and some frustrated whining, he mouthed the frisbee. He got a jackpot of treats. Then I waited him out for him to pick the frisbee up - which he did after even more frustrated whining and a bark or 2 :) (I'm so mean). I ended the session when he picked the frisbee up and tossed it down quickly. I figured that's enough for 1 day (took about 15 mins to get to that point). That was a pretty good first step I think.
He will take frisbees from me if I say "take it" but he won't pick them up off the ground and bring them to me. So that's what I'm going for eventually. Also, if I say "find the frisbee" he will run around until he finds it and put his paw on it then he runs off. When I say find the frisbee - I actually want him to find it, pick it up and bring it to me. Sounds easy but we have to do it step by step.
After the frisbee session, we went to agility where we were introduced to the UKC obstacle that has a table, jump then table where they have to sit on the small table in front of the jump, then jump, then pretty much land in a sit position on the other table. I'm not sure what it's called but I knew we were going to have problems with that one. Neiko is way too fast for something like that. But after a bunch of tries and breaking it down in to very small steps, he figured out what I wanted and slid in to a sit on the other side of the jump (we actually didn't have a bar on the jump). I was so proud. That took a lot of self control for him.
We worked on our control on the dog walk too (not at full height). Tonight, he went at exactly my pace instead of going kamikaze across it. So, if I walked next to the dog walk - he walked across it. If I ran next to the dog walk, he ran across it. He kept in perfect pace with me. That was pretty cool for his 2nd time seeing it :)
We also did the table, teeter (although the teeter was on the floor), tire, box and low jumps. I made him down stay quite a bit when it wasn't our turn and he never broke his stay even with all the chaos going on around him. We also worked on lots of turning and here's, watch me's etc.
So, all of these discussions we've been having lately have really helped me to think about what we're doing and need to be doing. So, thanks all!