To Jersey and Back

We had our practice session this morning in New Jersey. Unlike other times when we've gone to new places, Marge was actually quite confident when she got out of the car. (She did growl as a herd of Shelties came her way, but that's not too bad.) We met up with our friend from the club, which made Marge feel even better.

The place was really nice - indoors and spacious. The man running it was really nice and gave Marge some cookies. She took to him immediately. There turned out to be only three other handlers there - a very small group - which meant lots of time for practice.

This was the course (obviously property of whoever created it):

And, as usual, some notes (I'll keep it brief!):

We really had no problems running this course. Though it was an excellent level course, it was wide open and flowy.

• A-Frame, A-Frame, A-Frame. I've been practicing the down on the flat very often. She got it maybe 30% of the time. A couple of times she offered a 2o2o. I guess I'll just keep plugging at it... I'm REALLY hoping, though, that she's not going to get confused stopping on the dog walk and running to the bottom of the A-Frame. I don't want to mess up her contact criteria altogether!
• Hit her weaves perfectly. Pretty good because the entry was tough (required some distance from the handler) and it was the first time on this set of weaves. The set makes a difference.
• Oh.. the teeter. Marge went on it, banged it down, and then got terribly freaked by the squeaky noise it made as it popped back into position. She recovered, though, and was able to finish the course. I skipped the teeter in subsequent runs.. it was NOT worth her getting scared over.
• Table was a bit better. She jumped off once or twice, and all the other times plopped immediately into a down.
• Dog walk contact was pretty good. She kind of sputtered her way down the ramp a couple of times, but I'm really not looking to change it from a 2o2o especially since she's actually starting to get it.

Behaviorally, Marge was superb. Aside from one woof as one dog (our agility classmate) went bonkers on course, she was fine. That's a pretty big deal, considering she watched the runs of three totally strange dogs and was in the building with totally strange people.

My only complaint of the day came at the very end of our session.. the guy running it was demonstrating a contact training device to one of the other handlers, and it made a series of loud beeps. To me, it sounded like my smoke alarm, and I'm sure Marge felt the same way. She seemed to recover 100% though, as I took her through the tire and tunnel a couple more times just to make sure we ended on a good note.

On the way home, my dad (who so nicely drove me there) and I stopped for lunch. Marge waited in the car for a couple of minutes by herself. She was fine.. I gave her a cheese-stuffed Kong and she worked at that while we got our food. Then, she actually was calm enough to get out of the car and potty behind the building. It might sound funny, but all of that combined was probably the best part of the day. Even just a few months ago, that probably would have sent her into a frenzy.

Overall, we had a lot of fun and I wouldn't hesitate to go there again. I actually might go next month.

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I figure I should use this post to bring up some other events that we'll hopefully be at this year.

I'm already thinking ahead to our first trials of the year. We're got two trials potentially set up for April.. one, an AKC (gasp) agility trial, the other, an APDT rally trial at our training building.

I'm still iffy on AKC, just because they're usually pretty big trials, but at the same time I think it's looking like a go.. it's at the same site as our fall NADAC trial, mixes now run in the same classes as purebreds and can get the same titles (statement here), and she's allowed to wear a collar (security blanket for me). Also, since it's very early in April, there's a chance it'll be a small(er) trial since the cold might scare some people away. I do have some concerns about the teeter, but we'll see what happens.. I'd be fine running her in only JWW and possibly FAST, if anything.

I'm REALLY excited for APDT rally. Since it's at our club, I really don't have too much concern about stress or anything like that. She's taken the rally course by storm lately. We're going to do some practice with friends from the club pretty soon. The last trial my club had was run SO smoothly and a lot of qualifying scores were given out. With some luck, I think we can finish our RL1 title this year. How cool would that be?

After that, we've potentially got a stretch of about 4 CPE trials and 3 NADAC trials. Those numbers sound really big considering the fact that we only did one trial last year, but, we'll take it by ear and see what happens.

I probably won't post tomorrow or Monday, so I hope all of you have a lovely weekend, and stay tuned for this Tuesday's training update after our agility class.