Last week’s agility session was a little ambitious and whilst we managed it I think it lessened Beanie’s enthusiasm for the sport a bit. So today we’re going to try and make it more fun for her whilst still working a little on distance control. Here’s the course plan for today:
Four easy straight lines of equipment that she can run over full pelt. The only difficulty is for her to follow an ‘In’ command after she completes the last piece. I’ll initially aim to send her away over just one piece of equipment before calling her back in, but if she’s managing fine we’ll start sending her further and further away. The other important things in this course is that :
- a) she’s slowed down by the contact on the A frame before approaching the weaves (she still needs this or she gets too excited about the weaves and misses some).
- b) she’s slowed down by the weaves prior to the ramp – she tends to miss out the ramp if she’s too excited.
- c) she’s never slowed down prior to a send away. This is important as she won’t go if she’s not in full flight! I guess this is a problem we need to tackle sometime, but one thing at a time!
I’ll post up the results when we get back.
Results
Well, it didn’t go too bad.
Our contrary little Beanie has moved the goal posts again and decided that she gets fed up of waiting for her treat if we make the course too long. A few weeks ago she was only happy if we let her open up on a big course – now after half a dozen bits of apparatus she starts hanging from my leg pleading for a treat!
So, we broke it down into chunks and she got quite enthusiastic about it. We did manage to go round the full course, but not very well. Anyone with eagle eyes will spot a couple of edit points in the video (not least me magically switching from left to right side while Beanie is half-way through the chute tunnel). The key with Beanie is to keep it FUN – and never to let her fail. One mistake and she’s off sniffing the floor – deaf and blind to your attempts to engage her in the game again.
Biggles is turning out to be the little agility star. We don’t do much with him, but we take him along and let him have a play in the tunnels. It’s good practice because he’s learning to follow instructions and pay attention to us. Today we made up a special little course for him and he did very well – first time too! Don’t tell anyone, but it took about 5 takes for his big sister to get the same course right (she kept missing the tyre jump)!!