Agility Challenges

Before I get into training news (yeah, I've had a lot of that lately, I know -- blame the snow that's still on the ground), here are the pictures I promised from last week's Westminster Kennel Club dog show.

Marge's favorite breed was the Border Terrier. She liked the terrier group last year, too. Out of all the hours I spent watching, this was the breed that she watched the closest. I don't think it's a coincidence that she had played with an old Border Terrier friend the day before. It was really cute to see her watching the screen so intently.

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Saturday, as planned, I went for run throughs in northern New Jersey. Since there were several trials in the area this weekend, I knew that I wouldn't have to share the time with many people. Turns out I was right - I was with one other dog, a black Labrador.

Here was the layout, as best as I could remember it. I didn't even get CLOSE to running this whole course. It was one of the hardest courses I've ever seen. All of the contact approaches were extremely difficult.

I walked the course as if I was going to run the whole thing and then set Marge up at the start. She was NOT getting that tunnel under the dog walk. I mean, she was at the point where she was jumping over the tunnel to get on the dog walk. I worked it a while, but I wasn't convinced that she was getting better at it as I was having to practically stick my hand in the tunnel for her. For some reason, tunnel discriminations really bother her, especially when the tunnels are under the contact equipment. Guess I should work on this on our home turf, maybe gating off the contact obstacle so she can't make the wrong choice.

Louie suspected that the repetition of the opening sequence stressed her out. He was probably right. I felt like Marge was disconnected from me for a good chunk of the session. She did a lot of sniffing of the obstacles that were along the walls, not in use, and a lot of eyeballing, even though there really was not a whole lot going on.

She also ran up to another handler who was walking the course while we were breaking stuff down. This is something I'm really worried about, because I have this sinking feeling that she's going to do the same at the agility trial when she sees the judge.

For the rest of the time, I tried to just break stuff down and make it easy for Marge. We skipped some sections of the course entirely, and worked on the table which they were nice enough to bring out for me. On the bright side, Marge didn't have too much trouble when the man in charge counted down for me ("5 and 4 and 3 and 2 and 1 and go"), and that's something she's never done before at all.

Something else that I really liked was that Marge was able to do the teeter this time. Last time we went to this facility, she was absolutely terrified of the teeter, as it's both loud and squeaky. This time, I made it a lot of fun, and she seemed to be a lot more into it.

Her contacts were pretty good. I brought my post-it to use on the A-Frame, and she did it without a problem. I tried it a couple of times without, and she was about 50/50. So, I'm going to just gradually reduce the size of the post-it until she's solid without it. Her dog walk was fine, pretty speedy, but she did take a tumble off of it - the approach was REALLY hard and I probably shouldn't have even done it. She didn't seem fazed, as I ran her over it a couple more times to make sure she wasn't spooked by it.

I left the practice feeling sort of disappointed by Marge's inattentiveness. I didn't really think there was a lot of distractions, yet her nose was running her into every corner to sniff every scent. In reality, it was probably the tunnel/dog walk that set the stage for things to go badly, but I really hate it when she's stressy and all over the place - it makes me wonder if we truly are ready for what we're doing.

I don't think the sniffing is going to be a big problem, as she's loads better outdoors, but I do have a genuine concern about her running up to the judge and standing there sniffing for an obnoxious amount of time. (At the NADAC trial, the judge stood in one spot and did not move - in AKC trials, it doesn't look like this will be the case.) It's hard to practice with a "judge" in our training hall, since there really isn't all that much room. I guess I'll try, though.

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Today, we had Rally practice with our friend and her Westie, S. It went pretty well. Marge seems to be doing a bit better about having someone "judge" her in Rally, so I'm hoping that will transfer over to agility. Tomorrow, I have time at the training hall again, but I'm unsure what I'm going to do with it. I feel like we both need a break from agility, yet I don't want to set up a Rally course. Maybe I'll do some work on tunnels with her, to make her feel super motivated about them. Or, I may bring her obedience dumbbell along and do some of that, in addition to working on the wicket. Either way, there will most likely be video - I know that's an area I've been lacking in lately!