Tracey and I each took dogs to the agility field on Wednesday and Thursday evening. We tried to set up a small course with room between obstacles like the novice dogs will see at a trial. Our plan was to take a dog out of its car crate, walk dog to the "start line", run the course, releash dog at "finish line", walk dog back to crate for a party and a special yummy treat - same basic process as a trial. Bern, a seasoned veteran, knows the routine great and drags me back to his crate after each run at a trial for his trial-only yummy snack (part of a Little Cesar's tin of canned food). The novice dogs don't get handled this way during agility classes and can be confused at the first several agility trials because suddenly the rules (for getting a yummy treat) seem different for the agility game.
Grace's waiting to get a treat attention is good so I think she will stay in the ring and play this weekend. She did better on Thursday with more obstacles in her sequence. I have to be careful.. she doesn't want me to run too fast but she needs early information about what is coming up next. For now all her errors are going to my fault for not telling her where she needs to be fast enough. With Tracey's help, I think I can improve my timing for her.
Bern was mostly along to practice his 12 pole weaving... I see much better effort at hitting the poles and staying in. Tracey can actually get him fed into the weave poles very smoothly so weaves shouldn't be an automatic NQ for us in pairs on Saturday. Tracey ran Bern around the whole course... he is good for about 6 obstacles and then wants to come find me which may be just enough obstacles for a chance at a pairs Q on Sat.
We worked some on trying to get Jedi to turn... I saw improvement the more she worked with him. How we get him focused more quickly at a trial is a mystery to me but I'm going to watch him closely this weekend to try to give Tracey some ideas. Sparkle has developed a new game... lets leave the ring. We tried to show her that agility was like obedience... 2 minutes of attention gets the good beagle a snack. Sparkle was better on Thursday than Wednesday... maybe it will continue to improve over the weekend. For more on these 2 sagas... see Tracey's blog at www.pebblemistpups.com.
