Every now and then I sneak off from my usual training and drive miles to another class. It is very complementary with the more regular stuff and makes me think about other things in my performance. It helps to have as many pairs of eyes looking for areas for improvement as possible.

Spike seems to take it in his stride and works really nicely. As this is all done in an equestrian centre with lighting so I am really please about how he behaves.

So what did we learn?
1/ Pushing Spike over a jump can be done by standing quite close to it, and making the hand signal quite late. works better than standing off and "just pointing at the jump".
2/ I got him to sit and stay at the side of the arena, and he did it very well. Perhaps he behaves better when I am not right beside him!
3/ "steady" command, to slow them down for tight turns. We did this from in front of the dog with opposite hand, while moving back reasonably slowly.
4/I need to keep moving to commit spike to "go-on" sometimes I stop and wait for him to come back and it calls him off (which might be useful at some point).
5/ I should use left right not here all the time. Good point, otherwise why did I bother teaching them to him!
6/ I could use a close or heel and similar for rhs to call him in here is a bit too vague. (Does anyone know should it be close (static, sitting) or heel (moving), or is it a completely different behaviour really?).
7/ Spike is great! He can even be relatively quiet for a bit of last weeks pork roast!