Back to School

..the good kind of school!

Our day today went pretty well. We had a very short lesson with Marisa, which was honestly less about Marge doing agility and more about me staying calm and handling her effectively with our trial looming just a few days away. We didn't do any contact obstacles other than the teeter and table. She didn't massage Marge, but she felt her hip and said it felt a whole lot less tight than last week. In fact, she didn't remember which rear leg it was and couldn't tell, either, since Marge was standing square, moving fine and not giving any clues as to where the injury was.

Since I essentially got the A-OK on Marge's leg, we hung around for class. Marge waited in a crate while the main room was being used by other people getting a lesson. She did pretty well. She did puff up and grumble when another club member came in with her enormous (and loud, if I dare say) Rottweiler, but I was not surprised by that. I covered her crate to give her more privacy and there was no problem.

When it was time for class to begin, I took her into another section of the building and ran her around a little bit to get her warmed up. I'm trying to really be vigilant about not running her cold. We went through our small repertoire of stretches several times, too.

This was the set up, and we worked on some of this during our lesson as well.

Sequence One (White Circles)

• Led out to in front of the tire, kind of pushed her through the serpentine and then pulled her to the teeter.
• I front crossed the teeter; I could have front crossed before it, but front crossing after it gives Marge more courage (since the teeter is still scary sometimes).
• Used my inside arm to guide her over 5 and 6 and then pulled her back to the table.
• Had some trouble with the weaves tonight but I think it was my fault. I led out too far from the table and I think I crammed her space, so she entered at the second pole a couple of times. Once I gave her room, we had no problems (even though she was weaving into a corner!).
• I faded from the end of the weaves a bit. Getting into the tunnel was no problem, nor was taking the triple and swinging back through the tunnel down the line.

Sequence Two (Black Circles)

• Had Marge on my right up until the table. No real problems there.
• Led out over jump 6 from the table and got her in the tunnel. Once she committed to the tunnel, I did a landing-side front and then kept her on my right up until the teeter.
• Front crossed the teeter (again), pushed out to broad jump, pulled to the final jump.

Neither course was all that hard. I kind of liked that there were less obstacles out, which made for more room in between obstacles.

Sorry about no pics or video - I was all by myself. I am sure Friday will make up for it, with (hopefully) two videos and a lot of photos from the trial. It was a good day, though -- we didn't do too much, left out the hard stuff (contacts), and Marge's leg seems fine so far.

So now, no more agility until Friday at the trial. I can't believe it - our AKC debut is just days away!