Super Duper Agility Fun Friday

I got back on track and took Spot and Shelby to agility class on Friday. I have to say the mood was much lighter than 2 weeks ago, which was good. I go to class to learn, but also to have fun, and it hasn't been fun lately.

Spot was first. We worked on the usual stations. He has a really nice teeter, with no help from me! He is a little daredevil and just loves it to death. If I look at, he's on it. I could be 20 feet away. We also did the dogwalk, and the A frame, and restarted the weave poles. I felt like he wasn't really getting it, so I started back at the beginning with 2 poles. He was kind of getting it, but not quite. I was using shaping, so no cuing. He barked at me a lot, and wandered off a couple times, but a few times did take the poles and got the reward. At the end, we did a sequence of 7 obstacles. We did a jump, then another jump at a right angle to a tunnel, then 2 jumps and the dogwalk to another tunnel. Spot was on fire! I consciously stayed behind him and it really worked. Also, I didn't stop and reward on course. He likes working so much that I don't necessarily need to reward him to motivate him every couple of obstacles. He was very focused and fast. Gives me hope that we can start trialing in a month or two.

Then it was time for Shelby's class. We had 25 obstacles and they weren't numbered!!!The instuctor likes to do that to keep us on our feet I think. It was a little harder because it looped around on itself, which makes it more confusing. It was a course with a lot of jumps with some challenging crosses. We did 6 weaves twice, as well as an obstacle discrimination with the tunnel under the A frame. Shelby did very well, much better than last time. She had one distraction going into a tunnel because there was a new dog in class who was behind the gate, but near the tunnel. Overall, a fun night, but very long! I was there for 3 hours!