Jumping and Class

This past week we had open jumping on Wed. and pleasure walking and our regular agility class on Thur.  The girls and I were the only ones at the jumping class so we had lots of time to practice.  The set up is shown on the upper left.  We practiced rear crosses at 3, 3, and 2; tried a front cross after 3 (but had to end at jump 4 as I wasn't set up to finish through 6); worked on 180's followed by a front cross at 3-4, 3-4, and 4-5; threw in an "out" at 6 and 6 if my dog was on my right; did a couple speed runs; worked on a pinwheel 1-3; and did a two jump front/rear cross/post turn exercise.  Lots of fun stuff for such a simple set up!

I took Gidget to the pleasure walking class so I could focus on learning and not Gracie reacting to other dogs even though Gracie's my problem walker.  We started walking backwards, rewarding our dogs frequently for keeping a loose leash.  Then we turned so the dogs were basically heeling except that we weren't asking them to heel and they could walk out of heel position if they wanted, as long as the leash was loose.  If the leash got tight we'd turn around and reward them for catching up to us, making the leash loose again.  It's a pretty simple concept but it does no good if you can't be consistent with it.  That's where my issue will be.  One, I don't know that I'll have to patience to be consistent with it, and two, living in an apartment building full of dogs when one of my dogs is reactive to other dogs and can be aggressive makes stopping in the middle of the hallway to work on this unsafe.  We'll see what we can do though.

Since the pleasure walking class was at the time of Gracie's normal agility class, I got to run both girls in Gidget's normal class.  The class was extra huge this week so we only got to run two courses.  They were fun with some good challenges though. 

Black course: This course was pretty straight forward until 9.  For Gidget no cross was needed, after the serpentine (sort of) the tunnel was straight ahead and was the obvious next obstacle.  Gracie however is a contact whore and tried to take the A-frame even at that sharp angle.  A front cross after 8 took the A-frame out of play and put her in the tunnel.  Gracie had her fastest, in class, 12 pole weaves at 10 which I followed with a front cross to finish off the course.

Red course: The beginning of this course was a little different, but both girls held their start line waits (as usual) and handled the turn to the dog walk just fine.  Then after a front cross into 5, I set myself up closer to the landing side of 6 so that my dog was on my left for the serpentine (sort of) and I could post turn to the weaves.  At the end of the weaves, I pushed slightly on my dog's line toward jump 10 for a front cross jump wrap and ended the course with my dog on my right.

I think I have enough of my videos to work on a trial report next.  Yay!  Happy agility!