On the adventures and training of Cinnamon Snapdragon, a papillon destined for greatness.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Agility Foundation, week 6 recap

I took Dragon's new N2N crate to class. I kept the front flap rolled up so that I could reward him for choosing to stay inside rather than forcing him to stay and possibly stressing him. A few times when I walked too far away he started to slowly creep out of the opening and I had to return and put him back inside.

Before the class started I pulled out the little French linen tug toy I bought from Denise Fenzi. I was pleasantly surprised by his enthusiasm! We did three rounds of tugging and then running into the crate and then I put the tug away for the day.

Later during class I also wrestled with him. Coincidentally, Denise recently wrote a blog post about playing with your dog with your hands. I realized when I read the post that I push my hands into Tiny Dog a bit much when we wrestle. I switched to doing a light tap and then pulling my hands away and he quickly started diving at my hands with increased enthusiasm. It's a good session when the backs of my hands are covered with red marks afterwards. I want that drive.

We did contacts again this week. I would place Tiny Dog on the a-frame or dog walk and then let him run down toward his toy. I asked Suzanne how she will teach the whole obstacle, once we've got the contact foundation. She said that the dog walk lowers partially and then she backchains it. For the a-frame she lowers it almost all the way to the ground. Right now Dragon doesn't mind going down the contact, but he doesn't enjoy it and is slow and careful. I think I'll see a change once we're doing the whole obstacle and he can get some speed.

We also did the teeter, lowered almost to the ground and with sandbags underneath so that it just moved a wee bit. Dragon ran over it with good speed, thanks to the practice we've done at home for the past couple of weeks. Since it was so flat that it looked like just a board on the ground, I didn't use his foot target. I told Suzanne that right now, if I put his foot target on the mini-teeter at home, he slows down way before he reaches it, but if I don't put it down he's more likely to run quickly to the end, where he'll either stop and wait or just keep running like his other contacts. I've been playing around with the different options to try to figure out what works best for him. She recommended that I stick with the foot target and go back to building speed with no tipping. I signed up for a 30 minute lesson with her on Monday to work on contacts. I feel like I need extra guidance on this.

For circle work we did a simple jump > tunnel > jump > front cross and go back the same way. Then we stepped up the complexity and did jump > tunnel > front cross before a jump to another jump. All of us except for the one experienced agility handler had trouble getting into the right position for the front cross. One person ran into the jump. Comedy gold.

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