My husband and I got our first dog two and a half years ago now. She was a fluffy little ball of energy and was unbelievably cute! We started Gidget's training at a big chain store, not knowing any better place to start. We learned the basics; sit, down, come, shake, roll over, loose leash walking (not heeling), and stay (we never really got stay during this class). Over the next few months we watched Gidget grow and run. Boy could she run! Her favorite thing to do in a big open area is to run really fast in big circles, first around you in one direction and then a quick switch to the other direction. We went camping with some coworkers once and brought Gidget with. She found a great spot to run at a nearby beach. She ran her circles, flying over a couple downed trees, then headed straight out into the lake. I swear she made it a good ten feet before she actually sank and realized she'd been running over water. So back she swam before continuing her running. We'd discussed it before, but I'm pretty sure it was this event that solidified the fact that we needed to train her in agility!
Next we had a find a place to train. I didn't check out many places, though maybe I should have. My coworkers knew of a good place so I signed up. The instructor required that dogs get through level 2 obedience before starting agility and that's where Gidget and I started. I almost started crying that first class, we were so behind. All the other dogs knew how to heel! They knew stay in multiple positions! I was terrified when we were first asked to stay our dogs. I had Gidget sitting on my left, what I now understood to be heel position, told her to stay and took a couple steps forward, turned around, came back and rewarded her. She'd done it! I was shocked and so proud! To this day I'm not sure why she seemed to finally understand. My best guesses are she either grew and matured enough to focus and actually sit still, or something about the heel position gave her more of a guide as to what she was supposed to do. When we originally learned stay we just had the dog sit somewhere in front of us, nothing specific. Whatever it was, I'm glad it worked because now she has the best stay of any dog I know!
After that first class Gidget and I worked very hard to catch up and ended up passing the class with flying colors! Next it was on to foundation agility. 21 weeks of learning every obstacle and trying to understand the basics of how to put them together. Gidget loved it! She was often the class demo dog. It was a very fun class and Gidget and I both made some friends. We made it through foundation, spent several months in beginner agility, and are now in intermediate agility. We competed in our first AKC trial in October 2010. To my amazement, we qualified in both our standard (STD) and jumper's with weaves (JWW) runs! Gidget earned her novice title for STD in just three tries and we're only one leg away from our novice JWW title too! Our next trial is on March 5 and I'm rather nervous about running the open STD course, but I'm very excited too.
Alright, that's enough about Gidget and how we got started in agility. We got Gracie in May 2010, but she's a story for another day. She's just starting her agility classes and should be fun to follow. I'll try to keep my future posts shorter than this but I make no promises. Happy agility!
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