Extra Agility

The girls had open agility and regular class this week.  This first drawing is the open agility set up.  There was no set course but the numbers are what I ended up working on and having a lot of fun with.  We worked on some contact/tunnel discrimination.  Gidget's got this down, but Gracie is still learning that the contact is not the automatic choice.  4-10 was the really fun part, it involved working on some distance since you had to run around the dog walk to get set up.  First send from tire to tunnel, then run over to the take off side of jump 7 to set up for the wrap.  Then send back to the tunnel and run to the landing side of the tire, you'll need a front cross here to turn to the weaves.  Gidget picked up on the sends pretty quickly, Gracie took a few tries to willingly run away from me, but she figured out that she got to come right back!  I tried a little dog walk layering too, but that didn't go very well, oh well.

Here are all the class courses, sorry, four courses gets a little messy.  Gracie ran the black course (except 11 and 12) and the red course.  Gidget ran all of the black course, and the blue and purple courses.

Black course:  Front cross after 4 then a front cross jump wrap over 6 (both girls got some nice tight turns here though apparently I need to say "jump" along with continued body motion for Gidget).  Due to the curve of jumps 8 and 9 along with Gracie love of contacts, I had some trouble getting Gracie into 10.  I just couldn't quite turn my body enough away from the A-frame to rear cross the tunnel.  For the end of the course for Gidget, I originally set myself up close to jump 11 thinking there wouldn't be much to calling her over.  This lead to a very wide turn and almost taking the teeter for Gidget.  Turns out that the bigger the dog the further their longer stride takes them out of the tunnel.  An itty bitty dog can turn tight out of the tunnel, but a big dog will go wide unless you cut them off.  So by standing closer to the tunnel exit I was able to shorten Gidget's path and have a cleaner finish.

Red course:  This course had some fun front cross opportunities.  After the teeter I sent Gracie out to jump 5 while I set up for a front cross on the landing side of 6.  Then you can do a similar thing with 9-10 but you're just sending the dog to the backside of the jump instead of out to another jump.  Gracie had no tunnel issues for this course since I was on the other side of the jumps, not rear crossing the tunnel.

Blue course: Once Gidget was in the tunnel (3) I went and got ready for a front cross after 4.  I messed up my timing once on this, but otherwise it worked wonderfully.  I did a front cross after 7 to keep Gidget off the off course A-frame then rear cross the tunnel.  A hard pull away from the A-frame (no cross) worked for some people but that can slow down your dog. 

Purple course:  I have no written notes for this course, oops!  I do remember that Gidget kept looking away from me for a tunnel after the A-frame when I was trying to front cross (I think) her into the tunnel on the same side as me.  I think I did a front cross after 2 and a rear cross over 6... yup that sounds right, but there would be other options too.

That's all for last week, but we have open agility plus class again this week too.  Next week we have open contacts, open agility, and regular class!  Happy agility!