Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Agility Class 2/12/08

Tonight was our agility class. It started with a little sunlight, but finished under the bright lights. She had set up an ASCA course that was fun. The opening was a little tough on Boo, for some weird reason. He is usually pretty steady on a long lead out, but was not feeling that confidence tonight. I won't bore you with the attempts to get the opening, but here's my run once we got going:

Boo missed the weaves the first time, but it was all me. There was some misunderstanding- Pamela suggested I go on the left side, which I didn't want to do. What she meant, was to walk AWAY from Boo on the left side, not handle it from the left. (Yeah, I know, my blonde roots are showing!) At any rate, I just continued as it was. I was proud, however, of his dogwalk. He has been having some issues lately, but her dogwalk is only 11" wide- it's really building his confidence and I have been babysitting his entrance. On that run, however, I gave him a loose entrance, and he nailed it!

Gene and Kyra's attempt at the full course- you'll notice that Gene's interpretation of the course is slightly different than mine. (He forgot the course a couple of times. I cut part of the middle out.)

I give her a 9.7 on the landing, how about you?

Next, we worked on some weaves with Boo. He refused the weaves all weekend this past weekend. He seems to be handling them well, physically- which means training issue. Not sure how to handle his refusals now. He gets demotivated if I take him back too many times to repeat something. I'm not sure how he would react if I walked him off the course. We have an AKC trial next weekend, and I'm still debating what to do then. We'll see.

We worked on Boo and the wrap before the A-frame. He is not, normally, a tight turner, but she is helping us work on tightening up pieces of the course. I think this wrap was MUCH tighter than the first time through.

This last piece of video is the ending sequence- Boo was pretty slow coming out of the tunnel, so I took the opportunity to throw in a blind cross. You'll notice the reaction to my cross from the peanut gallery- it came from my criticism of Gene's last attempt (didn't include video here) where he "waited" on Kyra to take the last jump going into the chute so he could cross behind. I chastised him for not crossing, to which he made a smart remark back.

So, we learned a lot tonight. We'll see if we can remember it as we close in on our next trial

2 comments:

Theodorable said...

Great job, Patti! I like that course, it looks like fun. Boo is doing great, and his weaves looked good at the end. Looks like you are working through the problem well. Kyra's landing hurt to watch! Just like a poodle, though- what fall, I didn't fall, let's keep running. :) I don't think it was as cold there as it was here last night- it was 28! Brrrr! Love watching the videos- keep them coming!

Poodlebugs said...

The course was fun! And, I still have some work to do with Boo and the weaves- I want to get some video of him doing JUST weaves- with all types of entries and distractions. We'll see.

Kyra is the QUEEN of faceplant! She gets to going sooooooo fast and furious that she does it too often. We're lucky she hasn't hurt herself!