I flew home to Oklahoma on Friday. Janet and I. with help from the nieces, threw Mom a 75th birthday party on Sunday PM. Mom had fun along with several of her friends. Everything went better than expected. On Monday Janet, Amber, Erica, and I drove back to Baton Rouge. They are spending their Spring break vacation in Baton Rouge.
Tuesday we did the New Orleans French Quarter and a 3D IMAX movie on whales and dolphins. Next we drove back to Baton Rouge for Bern's agility class. Our new class session started with Nedra. Her goal is to smooth our handling skills. She selected a course from the Clean Run course book called Hail Mary, a box ringed by 2 tunnels and a jump chute of sorts. Bern was slow at the beginning of class. After some warm up he was running much better. We tried some rear crosses with him. Nedra and I have decided that he will forever be a front cross dog. During practice he will not get ahead of me so I can cross behind him... at trials he gets excited and will go ahead but we can't ever seem to get to practice this skill in class. However, we tried front crosses on the box pattern corners to push Bern "out" and it seemed to really help. A skill that may come in handy during his OJP courses that we can't seem to Q on.
I worked Grace some before class. She was happy on all the contact equipment, jumped through the 20" tire without a second thought, and raced over several big scary winged jumps. Working over the larger than life PVC pipe triple with wings last week seems to have significantly improved her understanding that a jump is just another obstacle even it it looks huge and scary... she soared over everything. The big winged triple trainer jump I set up for Grace last week was still up so Georgie put Zing over it a few times... she too thought it made a nice training aid. After I wore Bern out during his class, I let Grace have a turn on the Hail Mary course. I designed a Novice level run through course and then ran her once. She was fast, smooth, and performed the "outs" needed to go around the big box corners well. My classmate handlers seemed impressed at her improved skills. Grace, with Nedra instructing, will her spend Wednesday night class on the Hail Mary course too.
Tracey and I worked Kazee and Grace on weaves before classes started... both the girls are still struggling with handler movement. Grace needs 4" of channel or she misses part of the 6 pole set. I think I see slow improvement. I'll get out the World Class Article again to see where we go from here.
