Agility class recap

Due to many rainy days and Dragon being ill for almost a week, we haven't been practicing agility at home for about three weeks! Of course, there's some stuff that can be worked on in the home (such as jump wraps and the table), but when we're stuck inside I tend to practice tricks and obedience. It's been good to get to the agility field and practice on equipment again. Suzanne was subbing for Wendy this week.

We did a lot of jumping. We worked on adding lateral distance and reinforcing looking ahead at the equipment. Last week we had done rear crosses for the first time while moving (as opposed to stationary foundation, in which the dog does a sit-stay and you practice switching sides and rewarding their head turning). We had done a tunnel > rear cross > jump exercise. I was pleasantly surprised that Dragon did it perfectly! This week we did a send from a stay to a jump, rear crossing as the dog took off. Dragon was again 100% when crossing from right to left, and about 80% the other way. Then we did a send to tunnel with a rear cross, turning toward a jump. The first time I ran alongside the tunnel too far and pushed him to make a very wide turn and miss the jump. Next time I stopped at the plane of the jump and just rotated my body as he exited the tunnel and he got it. It was so exciting to see all this handling stuff coming together!

We did another Susan Salo basic jump grid, five jumps placed 4' apart for Tiny Dog. He now does an adorable bunny hop all the way through the jumps.

Our only contact practice this week was on the dog walk. Suzanne asked if we were ready for the full height dog walk, since it was almost the end of class and it hadn't gotten lowered. I wasn't sure about it but agreed to try it and get a measure of how he handled it. We went across three times, and halfway through each run I would toss his ball forward to keep his momentum up. He did slow down each time at the top of the down ramp, but it wasn't a big speed difference, and less so each time. (Again, this is one of the reasons that I felt running contacts would be a good choice for him; he's always quite careful when climbing down stuff and is unlikely to throw himself over the down contact.)

At this point we had played and jumped and run a LOT. I used about 75% wrestling or tugging as a reward and only 25% was food, mostly to reward walking by my side or start line stays. He was much more worn out than when I used to just give food. I was quite happy with his fierce biting of my hands and pulling on tug toys.