Back on Schedule

It feels like for ever since I've written about the individual for which this blog is named! After a week long stray from that topic, I do have a little bit of news about Marge.

We went back to agility class on Tuesday! I was SO excited. Though I didn't mind the indoor classes and think I learned a lot of good handling skills for tight courses, I couldn't wait to get back outdoors under the stadium lights. You can kind of consider this a late Tuesday Training post.

Our class is full. We've got a Rottweiler, a Golden, a Vizsla, a Cane Corso, a Portuguese Water Dog, a Lhasa Apso, and a Papillon with us. Only one of these dogs is one that Marge has a real issue with, but so far it looks like it will be okay. Only half the class was there this week, so it meant extra time for those who showed up.

The course was a bit easier than the courses we typically saw last year - still probably above the Novice level, but it just didn't feel like the Excellent level stuff we did last year. Some of the dogs are a bit greener than Marge is (can you believe we've been doing this a YEAR already?) so I think that might be why. I'm planning on having several private lessons with my instructor to begin to get ready for Open Standard (I forsee us flying through the rest of Novice Standard) and working on our Jumpers With Weaves skills (which I think are lacking - I feel like we might be in Novice for a long time).

The course (we ran each half twice, here's the better of each half):

The breakdown of the course:

• I led out to jump 2, just so I could be there for her to go over the teeter. I was happy to see that she wasn't really spooky about the teeter after her last sloppy one at the trial. She's still waiting at the pivot point, but I'm kind of letting her get used to it on her own - I know it will add seconds on to our time, but I'd rather that than make the teeter scary for her.
• Down the line to the triple - I sent to the triple and then front crossed as she came back to me. Her contacts were OK - I didn't use the post-it and she did some freaky stuff at first (like targeting the contact zone itself), but looked better each time.
• Back crossed before the jump to get to the weaves - the stupid Weave-O-Matics kept moving around and made it so that the poles bent the wrong way, which explains her issues tonight. Her entries looked good. She did pop out a couple of times at the 10th pole, though. Need to work on these for sure. I want to make them more independent.
• Really beautiful through the 180 to the tire. And an AWESOME send to the table. She did spin back towards me on this run but I don't think I cued it enough. I was shocked at how far out she went in front of me to get there.
• A-Frame/tunnel discrimination went crappy, as usual... took the Frame the first couple of tries. I adjusted my handling a little bit on the last run, using my off arm to guide her back in toward me, and she did take the tunnel, but she looked at the Frame first. She's even worse with the dog walk (always chooses the contact obstacle even if I'm shoving her in the tunnel and then gets stressy when we repeat it).

So, over all, we ran this pretty clean. She was so fast that night, I think it was cold and I hadn't walked her much during the day, so she was really feeling good. She took a couple of faceplants, too, just from being such a crazy girl and speeding around her turns.

No behavior problems, either. Friendly towards all people and indifferent towards most of the dogs. She's warming up slowly but surely to the Cane Corso, who has been so generous to provide his rear end for her to sniff, and the Golden Retriever, who she's gotten snarky with in the past.

There are roughly three weeks until our next agility trial, a local AKC trial that we're doing both days of. I will use my time well to get her prepared for it!