Friends and Valentines

It seems that Marge has an admirer here in blog land. When I checked my e-mail, I saw that Fudge decided to send her a Valentine's card.

Fudge, the answer is a resounding yes! After making friends with a PWD in our agility class this past fall, I think she has fallen for your breed. She would love to be your Valentine. Here's to lots of Rally Qs for both of you this year!

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We spend two hours of our Valentine's Day training with a friend and her Westie, who I'll call S. Marge has been in classes on and off with S for almost a year and has always gotten along with her. S is about to debut in a Rally trial next month, so her mom wants to get some extra practice in. Since training can get kind of boring alone, we buddied up and ran together this afternoon.

We spent a good while on Rally, setting up one course, running it a few times, and then modifying it. Both dogs did great! I pretended to be the judge so that S could get used to someone else being in the ring while she works, and she did wonderfully. I bet she's going to qualify at her trial next month.

While I "judged," Marge held a several minutes long down-stay. I was very proud of her. I tried a sit stay as well, but she began to squirm around so I had to go back and remind her what to do.

When it was my turn to run, S's owner did a little bit of pretend judging for me. Marge had the added distraction of S in her owner's arms, as the little pup didn't want to be left alone on the other side of the room. She eyed them a few times, but never got really stressy. Her Rally was good, as usual. S's owner even commented that she had a "happy tail" the whole time.

After Rally, we put out some Agility equipment. Just a few jumps, a tunnel, weaves, a table and a teeter. I didn't really do much with Marge, as my course design skills stink and I didn't want to wear her out too much since we've got more training coming up tomorrow. We worked the teeter a bit. I think it was low, but she did well. Her weaves were amazing, and she was solid on the table.

I also took out the wicket (which looks like this). Something didn't seem right about it, though. I'm not sure if I set it up right, though it did look pretty self explanatory. Marge was a little better about it then I expected. I did some clicking with it at first to get her to go over to it. By the end of the session, she was holding the measuring piece on her back as she nibbled on a cookie in my hands. She was a little slouchy, but I don't think she was really scared of it; I think it was mostly just annoying her. When I go back tomorrow, I'm going to ask someone to set it up for me so that I can see if I'm doing it correctly.

The best part of our session is that Marge and S got along smashingly. They played chase with each other while we set the Rally course and were fine to be off leash around each other. Marge started to get snarky when S came too close to my bag of Zuke's treats, but that's not uncommon for her, and I know better next time. Over all, I'm glad that I've found a new buddy for Marge to play with. We're likely going to run some Rally together again next week! It's so much fun having someone else there and it's great for Marge to play and train with someone else.