Thursday, August 16, 2012

ARFF Practice

Jonah and I went to ARFF practice last night.  It was super quiet--I'm not sure why more people weren't there.  The weather was pretty nice.  The course was a gamble from the NE USDAA regionals, and it was hard!

I got there and helped set up while Jonah hung out in the car.  By the time I went to get him he was excited and happy.  He barked not at anyone in particular but just at the prospect of doing agility.  Good boy :).

I brought his crate and set it up.  He stayed there while we waited for our turn.  One dog came flying right at his crate and he barked, but otherwise he was pretty good and settled.  When it was time for us to run, I walked him once over the dogwalk to start with.  He'd had a lot of trouble with it the last time we used it.  It has really big slats, and I think it throws him off.

Then we were off, and he was fast!!  We did a jump and then the dogwalk, which he nailed with a nice jackpot.  Good boy.  He weaved speedily, too.  Then we did a little serpentine back to the dogwalk.  This time he lept.  Oops.  Next it was time to head to the gamble.  It was like this:


He went in the tunnel and I didn't hang back enough to get a good turn, so he went out and took the tire.  Really it was the only thing he saw thanks to the bad line I set.  Oops.  Then he went to the teeter but he bailed off it when I started going around the tunnel.  We did it again with me on the close side of the tunnel, and it was no problem.  I thought we'd have a chance getting this gamble, but I guess it's a little bit beyond us.  I think he would do it at DogStar.  Anyway, I played with it a little bit, getting so I set a good line out of 1, over 2 and out to 3.  He just didn't want to do a teeter 25 feet away from me yesterday, and that's alright.  25 feet is pretty far.  I guess teeter performance at distance should be on our list for improvements, but even after this I'm not convinced it needs to move to the top of the list.

I also schooled the dogwalk a little bit more and he got it every time.  Honestly I don't mind that much if we have a leap from time to time, as long as he still understands the criteria.  I'd rather have an exuberant miss than a nervous hit.

His table performance is looking good at home, too.

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