It’d been a long, long time since we’ve done any agility practice – several months at least. But as our lawn recovered from the builders and the weather got warmer we started getting the agility equipment out and trying to remember how it’s all done!
Today we decided to work on weaves with Beanie. We set up a little course with just six weaves and a few strategically placed jumps so we could practice entering and exiting the weaves from various directions. She was a bit sluggish but didn’t do bad at all given that this was her first time in almost a year!
Next we tried 12 poles and the most difficult thing for Beanie – entering the weaves after a jump. The jump gets her a bit excited and she tends to make mistakes. This took a few practice runs but we got there eventually.
Finally we added in a couple of jumps and a return pass through the weaves.
As you can hear in the final clip, Biggly Boy was now getting a little vocal about it being his turn.
Now in many ways Biggly Boy should be easier to teach. He tends to stay close and gaze up into your eyes with his tail wagging (unlike Beanie who initially would spend training sessions zooming around the course completely ignoring me!). But progress has been surprisingly slow. I think the problem is that he doesn’t enjoy flying over the equipment just for the sake of it the way Beanie did. For him it’s only about the reward at the end. Nevertheless we have high hopes for him as he always gets there in the end – in his own special way!
With the hard work out of the way it was time to get down to some serious business.
Noisy, who us?
We finished off with a game of fetch. True to form, Biggles retrieved his ball a couple of times and then took it off to his lair where he guarded it jealously whilst systematically destroying it.
Beanie was a lot more interactive.
It’s a hard life for a puppy.