[Solid Mutt]

ACM - I am so sorry about Toby, that is just so sad. Many hugs and prayers go out to his sweet little body...

Shaina - GREAT PICTURES!!!!!!

[Squeeker]

Libby and I had an OK class this week. We were both a little off. My body language was apparently confusing her, and she apparently forgot what a tunnel was

We had a good weave session again, and did some fun sequences, but we just weren't "on". That's OK, it happens rarely!

[MissMutt]

Originally Posted by Squeeker

Libby and I had an OK class this week. We were both a little off. My body language was apparently confusing her, and she apparently forgot what a tunnel was

We had a good weave session again, and did some fun sequences, but we just weren't "on". That's OK, it happens rarely!

That's okay, Marge has forgotten for the past week or so what weaves are..

My handling has also been awful. I think the trial is actually to blame, because I was so worried about her running off that I started my ol' slumping routine.. I NEED to learn to run up straight.. lol

Here's a video from our practice tonight. This is the first time Marge was even in this building, we had private practice for an hour and just kind of played around. She was very stressed at class on Tuesday, so I wanted to make sure that I did something totally fun and motivational with her.

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[Kyllobernese]

Just got back from our two day trial. Remmy Q'd in his third Starter's Standard so now has his ADC ( Agility Dog of Canada) title, plus he had already had 2 Q's in Starters Jumpers, and one each in Starters Gamblers and Starters Snooker. He got his second Q in both of these classes so also got his SGDC ( Starters Games Dog of Canada) Title. He has already earned one Q in Advanced Jumpers.

He just started trialing in June and has only attended five trials. As he just turned two in October, he has earned a good rest till spring. This was his first indoor trial as all the other trials were outdoors and he was fantastic. It will be a lot tougher next year so want to give him time to mature more.

[RaeganW]

We has it!!!

I'm soooooo excited, I finally found a class that's open now and don't have to wait until the new year! It's in an "unheated riding area on a dirt surface," and a 45 minute drive away, but that's about par for what's available around me. It doesn't start until next week though, I can't wait!!!

Any tips on what Gatsby and I need to know before we have our first class? The class description is below. He has his basic obedience, but it can be a little shaky in high distraction areas.

Sit stay w/release word, developing and maintaining drive, playing with your dog/relationship building, contact end position training, foundation jump training, foundation teeter training, weave poles, left, right and switch commands, front and rear crosses on the flat, and much, much, more!!

Ahhhhhh, I'm so excited! Agility is half the reason I wanted a dog, I've been in love with the sport since I was eight years old.

[agility collie mom]

Go with really good treats, a flat buckle collar and a great sense of humor. Believe me dogs do the funniest things and so do we as handlers. I've gotten lost on the course more than once! lol Good luck and let us know how things go.

[MissMutt]

Congrats RaeganW! Sounds like news for the blog *poke poke* lol

Here is our sequence from last night's class. Marge ran like a dream!

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The opening sequence was tricky.. the first time we ran I started at jump #2 because I didn't want to freak Marge out with having to redo everything (she pulls to contacts like crazy). Honestly though she was just SO easy to handle. My trainer didn't want us doing a back cross through that 180 before the A-Frame but I like backs and she read me just fine.

2o2o needs a lot of work as you can see. She's fine on it on the dogwalk (though she hasn't seen the dogwalk since the trial) but the A-Frame it's a little harder. Not doing a teeter contact as she's still getting comfortable with the teeter AND always hits the yellow anyway. I did catch her trying to do a 2o2o on it, though.

That jump sequence in the back was crazy. Marge jumped a little too big and had to come back in but again, she read me so well!

Weaves were terrible. She wasn't the only one who flubbed them so I'm thinking they weren't aligned right or something. She has been hving some trouble with them, though, so I'm going to keep an eye on it.

Next week is our last class at the field and then we move inside.. going to miss doing these big ol' sequences!

[Kyllobernese]

This is Remmy's Advanced Jumpers in his last trial. We had a clean run but were 1.7 seconds too slow, my fault, will have to run faster.



This was Remmy's other Advanced Jumper class. He didn't Q in it because I thought he was going off-course and called him off a jump, he was right and I was wrong. Didn't get any videos of the three classes he Q'd in.

[Solid Mutt]

Great Videos everyone!!!

How is everyone doing? This thread seems to have slowed down

Miss Mutt - You two are really looking great! Marge is working awesome!

Kyllobernese - Remmy is absolutely adorable! Love your videos too!!!

I will give an update and try to keep it brief. HA you all know me and my books I tend to write. Voodoo and I attended our first AKC trial this past weekend. First thing I regret is NOT entering both days. Silly mistake. We had a blast while we were there. There were lots of instructors from our group at the trial, which was great! I enjoyed watching them run their dogs. You can learn a lot from watching. They gave me lots of support and encouragement while we were there! Our first class of the day was Standard, it did not go as planned and ended in an NQ. I was very tentative and it showed. I was not trusting myself or her... She however ROCKED and had I given her better direction we would have probably Q'd. She got ahead of me a couple times and burned some extra energy she had. LOL One of those times I was sending her to the weaves but my body sent her back to the table where the judge happen to be standing and well she decided to visit him and pay her respects. HAHAHA. It was hilarious! She nailed all of her contacts and her weaves, which was awesome. Unfortunately, we were 2 seconds to slow to Q. 2 seconds Seems I need to do my job better and worry less about her. Our other class of the day was JWW. I felt much more confidant this time around. Voodoo and I also had that moment where it just "CLICKED" I had my game plan however, I did not execute it the way I had planned. Who would have guess that? That would be too easy. I blame the agility jitters for it but, oh well. I had a couple little handler bobbles where I did my rear crosses a jump too soon. But, then in a moment it clicked "We can do this" and BAM we went for it. It felt incredible! When we got done everyone cheered and 3 of the instructors from my group all met us at the gate. They all gave us big hugs and just shared in our excitement. They said you did it. You Q'd - I was like really? They were like Ah, YEAH! We finished the course 14 seconds faster than the SCT even with my bobbles. We Q'd and little bit later the results came out and we won 1st place. I cannot even begin to express in to words how awesome it felt. We had a blast watching all the other dogs go and some pretty funny bloopers at times. There was lots of laughs and good times.... Seems the cool morning not only affected Voodoo. hehehehe

[Kyllobernese]

A "Q" sure makes you feel like you must be doing something right, Congratulations. Remmy's first Q, he was under the time by a fifth of a second and it was his first trial. Maybe we will have to start a new Thread so it will show up in New Posts. People may not be looking through these older ongoing threads. I know our Agility here has stopped for the winter as the only Indoor arena in the area has been closed down and it is too cold and snowy to train outdoors. Sure miss doing it and so does Remmy.

[RaeganW]

We're down to hours before out first class; I'm so jittery! To kill time I'm reading old posts over at AgilityNerd. It's one of my favorite blogs: combining agility and nerdery, what could go wrong?! I keep checking the trainer's website and there's three other dogs in the class. For a long time it was only one other dog, and what was that dog's name? Odis.

That doesn't sound like a big deal, but what did Gatsby's previous owners call him? Otis. He hardly (if at all) responds to that name now, so I'm not really nervous, but it was kind of funny.

Question: What do I do about feeding? At first I wasn't going to feed him tonight because I want him to be hungry. I have some dried (lamb?) liver for a really high value treat tonight because I know we're going to have attention issues. I feel like eventually we could progress to toy rewards (and I plan to bring one tonight) but he doesn't drop it very well and he'll take food more reliably. It's going to be so late when we get home I don't know if it's really worth it to give him his dinner kibble, but it kind of feel like letting him have ice cream for dinner with the liver at class. Is it really a big deal? Should I just let it go, or feed him early (the earliest it could be would be two hours before the class)?

[MissMutt]

I usually give Marge a tiny bit of her usual meal just so she has SOMETHING. Be prepared to use a LOT of treats if your class is anything like mine.. lol.

We had our last class of the season outdoors today. No agility for about three weeks , then we're moving indoors.

Here's the video.. I put the notes in there so I'm not going to re-type them out here.. lol

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BIG Congrats to you, Solid Mutt, and Voodoo! I don't think we'll EVER go to AKC even though some trials next year near me are accepting mixes.

[Alex927]

really fun videos everyone! great work guys. You guys must be so proud!!

It's so funny, last night my dog started playing with his toys and bouncing around for the first time and I was bubbling over with happiness so I can't imagine how proud you guys feel of your dogs!! really great stuff. inspiring actually..

[Squeeker]

Kyllobernese, great vids! You and Remmy remind me a lot of a dog in my class. The two of you make a great team! Congrats on the Q's!

Solid Mutt, sounds like you and Voodoo had a great weekend!! Congrats on your Q, as well as the first place finish! You must be thrilled!

RaeganW, how did your first class go? I never feed Libby before class. She gets more than enough at class, and the added bit of hunger never hurt the attention span

MissMutt, Marge just didn't want to go in that tunnel for some reason! Silly girl... Libby did that at class two weeks ago. It's frustrating, but you also can't help but laugh! Great run otherwise, though! Marge seems to be reading you really well.

As for Libby and I, well, we missed last week's class because we had to pick my MIL up at the train station. She's been visiting us for the past week, and we just couldn't pick her up and then haul it out to class in time. We have class tomorrow, though, and we'll be going!

[MissMutt]

She actually WAS going in the tunnel some of the time and running all the way through, but then heard me calling her from all the way over by that jump... and I guess thought the best way back would be to go back through the tunnel. LOL. So, to solve it, I got right up near the tunnel opening and then had to do that awkward back cross the to dog walk. Can't wait for Libby's report from tomorrow's class.

[RaeganW]

Our class was AMAZING. Gatz was spectacular, he made my every word a lie ("he's got surface issues, he's not going to like the A-frame" "The teeter is going to scare the crap out of him" "I don't know that he'll take food this keyed up"). He was still himself, mind. I don't want you guys thinking I had an entirely different dog at class. He was reactive, and barky (some of the sounds he made are not in the human register), and totally a spaz, but I learned A LOT about what his threshold is, how to keep him below it, and how to bring him back. That alone is worth it, to me. I need to find some dogs to work with outside of agility, though.

Food was not an issue, he had treats in his mouth as fast as he could swallow

We did a little restrained recalls, chase, and jumps, then focused mostly on starting contacts. The jump setup was interesting, it was a series of four jumps with gates on both sides so to get to the end (me, with treats) he had to go over the jumps.

Gatsby was FEARLESS on the contacts. I'm so so so proud of him. We started 2o2o. I need to find something around the house to practice on. As a rule, Gatsby has no concept of anything below his neck, except perhaps a paw to smack me in the face with, but I think he started to get the idea that I wanted him to do something with his butt.

Then the dogs were exposed to a teeter moving centimeters under their feet. Gatz wasn't as nervous as I thought he would be, very curious about smacking that thing and making it move. By the end, he was "calm" enough to play some tug. We gotta work on "out" though.

Can't wait 'til next week

[MissMutt]

You can use stairs to practice on. They've helped me SO much with starting to solidify Marge's contacts.

Sounds like you had an awesome time with a lot of cool stuff! All we did in my first class was use uprights with the bars on the floor.. lol

[Squeeker]

Wow, I just got back from a great class!

Libby was on FIRE tonight! It was the total opposite of our last class!!

Our first sequence was a-frame, 180 to teeter, jump, jump, tunnel (and there was a TON of space between the teeter, each jump, and the tunnel, so I had to BOOK IT). She did fantastically!

Next up was a weave sequence. We did a jump, jump, turn 90 to dog walk, left flip to tunnel, and out of the tunnel with the weaves at a 90. So, it was just a matter of lining the dogs up properly to take the weaves. She weaved like a pro... she didn't make a single weaving mistake tonight, 6 for 6! YAHOOOOOO!

Then we did a fun sequence that consisted of the table and two tunnels, shaped like the letter C, nested inside each other. The point of the exercise was entry discrimination. That was a bit of a lesson in handler communication!

Our last sequence was a speedy one: Broad jump, jump, jump, 90 to dog walk, flip to tunnel again. She did it perfectly! She is really getting good at the flips.

I wish we hadn't missed last week's class (they did a full course, timed and everything...) but it seems that a little break really did the two of us some good!

RaeganW, it sounds like you had a great first class! They really threw you guys right into it! Congrats!

[RaeganW]

It sounds like they did! LOL, I'm glad we got right down to obstacles, I have a huge issue with patience I made the mistake of going to Fleet Farm today (it's like someone crosses a Home Depot and a Walmart and produced PURE AWESOME) and they sell PVC pipe for like $3 a six foot pole. Must... make... agility equipment!

Go Libby! That tunnel set up sounds awesome. Can you define a flip? I keep picturing an X-wing doing some sort of complicated turning maneuver, and I'm pretty sure dogs can't do that

[Shaina]

Well Kim and Web's classes wrapped up this week. Both are doing well and having a lot of fun.

Mira's class is at a neighboring club. I took the big kids along tonight to work them in obedience in a new setting before class...while I was goofing around the instructor for Mira's class (who was there early) asked if I would do one of the last-night-of-puppy-class demos. So Kim did an agility demo in a new building on new equipment at the end of Mira's class...went pretty well though we knocked a bar on a tight corner because I was focused more on the 12 weave set ahead and shifted my shoulder too early...oops. It was fun, though, and I got to give a quick plug for mix breed doing performance sports, which is always good

Originally Posted by RaeganW

Can you define a flip?

A flip is when the dog completes one obstacle and does a sharp 180 turn off of it to another obstacle. Usually used to refer to going from a contact to a tunnel (or vice-versa) when both entrances face the same direction right next to each other.

Better explination, with an explanation of alternative methods:
[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HfmguME_c0[/YOUTUBE]