Thursday night agility

Spot and Shelby both had agility class on Thursday night. They were both super happy to be there.

In Spot's class we worked on sequences. I still don't have good timing with him. He is so fast and headstrong that he likes to drive ahead and do what he thinks is right. We did a sequence a couple different ways, using serpentines. My instructor thinks maybe Spot is nearsighted, because sometimes he just runs by obstacles-in particular jumps and weaves. She even hard a hard time at one point getting him to take a jump. I knew it wasn't all my fault!

Shelby's class was really fun. We didn't run a course. Instead we worked on determining if our dogs truly understand obstacle discrimination cues Come and Out. At first we tried to send our dogs over a jump to the far end of a tunnel, which the dog could not see. Only one dog out of 4 got it. Shelby got the near tunnel entrance. I used my Flip command to actually tell her to take that one, and she did, so she does know that.

Then we set up the dog in the center of the tunnel and used just a verbal command to send them Out to the far entrance. Shelby was really confused! She didn't quite know what to do with herself. It was kind of funny. She just looked up at me, like what are you doing? So I had to give a tiny hand motion and she got it no problem. Same thing with Come.

Then we worked on sending to the weaves. We sent the dog over a jump to the weaves about 12 feet away. Then we added layering, so that there was a jump between us and the weaves. Shelby was a champ at that-no issues at all on either side. That really taught me that I need to not babysit her weaves. She knows how to do them and I should stay out of her way!