Thursday, February 16, 2012

I love my dog.

It's pretty great to have one hour of awesome set aside every week.  It's not like we have perfect lessons all the time--we make our share of mistakes, but it's just SO MUCH FUN!  There are lots of times where I have the privilege of seeing Jonah really happy (like, every time I come home, whenever we play, when he romps wildly around the yard...), but none trumps when he's doing agility.  I'm so lucky to get to share that happiness with him.

At class tonight, there were bunches of things that Jonah did very well.  They included:
-A frame contacts.  They were awesome every time.
-We did beautiful threadles.  They were fast and efficient.
-Table performance.  It was looking very good.
-Distance.  I worked on handling weaves, a push to a tunnel, some jump work and a push out to the teeter all at some distance, and he was excellent.
-Discriminations.  We did a bunch of them and he was perfect every time.

Here are some things we had more trouble with:

This was the beginning of our first course.  When I walked it, I thought it was pretty straight forward.  I like to run with him form the start when I can, so I was planning on RCing 3.  Well, Jonah was so high starting out that he wasn't paying as close attention to me as when he's settled in.  By running with him, the angle from 1 to 2 was slicing 2.  As he was jumping 2, he saw the A-frame.  I called him off it, but the line was pretty wide, and then his angle of 3 was awkward so he turned wide from 3 to 4 as well.

The second time I ran it I made sure to push a little wider between 1 and 2 so he was straight from 2 to 3, but it was still a little messy.  If I'd done it a third time I would have just done a lead out, and I think it would have been more tidy.


This entry required patience on my part.  The first time we did it I was already moving forward when he exited the tunnel (I had to handle the weaves with him on my right), and it made him enter at the second pole.  The second time I came to a full stop and waited for him to come in towards me so he straightened out his entry.  When I was patient, it worked.

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