Wednesday night I taught my beginners agility class. Tracey has taken over Noel's class so we hope to set up a course or two that we can trade out between weeks or half way during class. It would be great if we had some field space that we weren't sharing with the competition level classes up on the front course for Mon & Tues and the alternate beginner classes on Mon & Tues on the rear course area. The space constraint makes it hard for an instructor to get to leave something up and not infringe on another teacher's lesson plans.
Tracey had an idea for Grace in the weaves. We took one of the overturned planting pots that are used to number courses and placed it as a target past the end of a set of 6 channel weaves. Then we took a small tub of food and put it up on the pot... it was bites of liver sausage. It took Grace few minutes to understand that she needed to weave to get rewarded but she was really trying then. Her head was up... she was not sniffing her way to the target. Grace was weaving better and concentrating more. Taking the toy out of the playing field worked well. We repeated this again on Thursday night but I didn't take a set of weave that could be opened... we discovered she isn't really ready for closed poles with any speed.
Bern practiced his obedience exercises for Open for Alexandria this weekend. He seems to remember them all now. The hand signal for the retrieves is working well. The drop is still rocky... he only drops within about 8 feet of me.
