Weekly Lesson

Jonah was a completely different dog this week at his lesson.  Last week he was dull and slow, but this week he was eager and speedy.

Our first course went pretty much perfectly.  He was fast all around, took nice lines and didn't make any mistakes.  After we finished, there weren't even any parts we wanted to do over.

Then Joan gave us a harder course, and it did us in a little bit.  First off, I got lost, which never helps things.  Even once I figured out where we were going, though, Jonah had some trouble with some of the discriminations.  He had A-frame suck.  I think it took us 3 or 4 tries to get it right, and I had to pull hard and call his name to get him to un-bid from the A-frame.  Good learning experience for us.

In general, Jonah's enhanced speed made him a little less focused on me.  That meant that any little bits of unclear handling on my part allowed him to go take whatever was in his sight.  It was really good for me because it brought out a bunch of bad habits that I have which I've always been able to cover for when he's slower.  This mostly came across in the placement of my front crosses.  If I was moving at all in the direction of a jump I didn't want him to take, he would take it.  I really had to position myself for the next obstacle.  Also, I can work more on making his line as short as possible by really asking him to jump a small part of the bar rather than always approaching the middle of the jump.

Good stuff.  School is really picking up for the big grind, so agility is a little bit on hold, but I'll keep you posted with any news we have.