Jump! Jump! Jump!

Last night was Gracie's 5th foundation jumping class.  We were missing a few dogs from class, which is normally pretty big, possibly due to the freakish cold.  I think one of the dogs may have been in heat since her handler was there without her.  The class is made up of mostly herding dogs; 2 Border Collies, an Australian Shepherd, an English Shepherd, a German Shepherd, Gracie (who is a Blue Heeler mix), and then four non herding dogs; a Portuguese Water Dog, 2 black lab mixes, and an English Toy Spaniel.  It's a fairly good group.

Last night we first learned about converging.  When you have obstacles (in this case jumps) in a relatively straight line, you should start a short distance from the first obstacle and instead of moving parallel to the jumps as the dog takes them, you move at an angle towards the last jump in the sequence.  This gives the dog more information as to where they are going instead of needing to check back in with you after every jump.  Moving towards a dog pushes them away from you so converging pushes them towards the last obstacle.  Gracie and I had a little trouble with this going one direction, but not the other way.  Gracie has a good problem, she pays too much attention to me - she just heels too well!  That makes doing a sequence of jumps with her on my left slightly more difficult as she's too busy looking at me to see and take the jumps.  We had better luck with me changing how I held my arms.  I moved them like I was running (that's all I'll be doing when she's up to full speed!) so that I didn't look like I was asking her to heel.  It wasn't perfect, but it seemed to help.

Next we did an exercise to see how well the dogs were paying attention to their handlers.  Three jumps were set up in a straight line with another jump set up so that you'd have to turn after the second jump to take it.  We took the first 2 jumps and then stopped and the dog got a reward if they paid attention to us and didn't take that third jump.  Then we went back, did the 2 jumps, stop, reward, then turned to the jump on the side.  I think only one dog ever took the third jump, they all pay great attention!

Last we got started on rear crosses.  Standing with the dog between you and the jump, lure the dog over the jump and turn toward the jump to meet and reward them.  Eventually we'll move to starting in front of the jump and adding "left" and "right" commands.  I don't know how I'll ever keep my lefts and rights straight while on a course!

Gracie did so well at class!  She hangs out in her travel kennel while waiting for her turn to jump.  She whines a lot while waiting but we're working on that issue too - I reward her a lot when she's actually quiet!  Classes with Gracie are a lot less stressful and a lot more fun than they used to be!  I used to stress out so much about her behavior around other dogs, but she's improved so much that I'm finally relaxing with her.  I can't wait to start her tunnels class on Saturday!  Happy agility!