Thinking more about London and rear crosses - I know this isn't a specific problem to me, as Fenwick reads rear crosses with no issues. One of the things I didn't even realize I was doing until yesterday is how consistently late I was cueing the cross with London. It was very obvious that I did not feel comfortable cueing the rear cross until about the last third before the obstacle. In some cases it was because of going through a box, but I think it goes back to London's habit of pulling off of rear crosses if I start my cross too early. This is especially apparent with shallow rear crosses, he will often turn away but not take the jump, even at the last trial. Once again, I feel totally confident with shallow rear crosses with Fenwick.

I think there are several reasons for London's issues, but I do wonder if it has to do somewhat with how I trained the dogs differently. I didn't even teach Fenwick a rear cross until we'd been doing agility for like 2 years, which I think is really funny. When I finally did, I taught the behavior with jumps. London I taught the behavior on the flat first and did a ton of shadow-handling and such. An interesting by-product of each is that Fenwick has great rear crosses with jumps, but has continually struggled with rear crosses on the 'flat', such as turning away on a contact into a tunnel.  Of course, everyone is aware of how much London LOVES to turn away into tunnels on contacts (usually without even being cued to do so!).

Really though, what with training out so many of London's natural motion cues when he was younger, when I went back and retrained everything I focused on was me being in front, being proactive, keeping me right there with him.  I never retrained rear crosses, and I can obviously get by more often than not without even using them.  Heck, I don't recall ever even needing rear crosses for those first two years with Fenwick - I like front crosses!  Such a simple thing, but does also go back to a continuing issue, which is the farther London gets away from me the more things go to pot.  

We can retrain rear crosses though, having the video yesterday was extremely helpful to see how I'm not even giving him enough information to do what I'm asking for.  He's not being 'naughty', he just doesn't know what I want because I'm not even cueing it in the first place - and he certainly hasn't been rewarded for responding the way I want anyway.  Ah, video, how humbling.  And what is with my obsessive applauding at my dog no matter what he does?  Do I always do that?