Advances in Tunnels

Had another fun tunnels class with Gracie yesterday.  There wasn't much new stuff, but we did some good building on what we've learned.  The fabric for the chute was actually attached to the barrel.  We held the fabric up so that it looked for tunnel like and dropped the fabric as the dogs ran through so that they got used to feeling it on their back.  Gracie started out really well, but then got hesitant after a few tries.  I'm not really sure what happened, but the instructor thought that part of it was that I wasn't sending Gracie straight into the chute.  I was letting her drive to what she likely thought was a tunnel but when she gets to the entrance she can't see as much as she would be able to if it was a tunnel.  This easily could have thrown her off a little.  I switched places with the instructor so that she was holding Gracie and I held the chute fabric and called Gracie through.  A few tries of this seemed to fix the majority of the issue and we ended with a couple good chute runs with the fabric held up.  Maybe we'll get her through with the fabric all the way down in the next week or two!

We worked on front crosses with a curved tunnel and post turns with a straight tunnel.  Gracie did well at these and I think I have them down too.  The instructor did suggest that I not send Gracie to the cone for the post turn, but instead keep up her speed and run with her to the cone and turn with her.  This will help her build her drive so that eventually I won't have to send her so much but use her drive to get her to do the needed turn.  After practicing on one tunnel, we sequenced the three tunnels together with cones between each one to practice front crosses.  Seeing the dogs actually run a sequence was pretty fun and a lot of them had some really nice tight turns around the cones.  Can't wait for next week!  Happy agility!