It's Jedi's favorite day of the week! Agility night! Last night Jedi got to go to puppy class, but it's not nearly the same as the fun he gets to have at Canine Sports Zone. Last night was the first of two graduation nights this week, though, and Jedi enjoyed himself. I let him play with the other puppies but did try to distract him from doing a lot of running. The lab puppy was out of town this week, so that helped things a bit. It was only about 85 degrees outside, so the class got to go for a walk outside to practice their leash walking skills. Jedi was a good boy -- if anything he was wilting from the heat and being pokey for the last half.
I set our new wings out yesterday (no bars) to introduce Jedi to sending through and around them. I just set them in a pinwheel pattern and worked on various things. The only downside to the design of these wings is that there is nothing from stopping the dog from going through the middle of them -- which Jedi did several times. I figure it's good practice for really defining the path, though, and showing him where he's going. We worked on sends, wraps, backsides, and pushes, and pulls. We definitely need more work on pushes and pulls. I also worked on a few "flips" (spin/twirl) around the backside. I'd like to start to introduce a rear cross before too long here.
Secret and Kaiser went to the chiropractor today and Jedi got left at home because I figured 4 hours in the van tonight would be enough -- he didn't need an additional 1.5 hours traveling back and forth to Viroqua. This meant that when we got to class tonight he was ready to go! Lucky for him, tonight was full of opportunities to play and run. We started off doing bottoms on a plank in the turf arena. Jedi started off super distracted by the tunnel that was set off to the side. It didn't get a whole lot better when we turned the ends down, but he eventually started to focus and nail his bottoms with some speed.
Over on the other side we worked the tire to a tunnel. Back over in the turf arena we ran through jump standards.They started in a pinwheel pattern and the instructor kept moving them to challenge Jedi a bit. He did great and enjoyed getting to run. When we switched back over to the mat side we sequenced together a jump standard, broad jump (2 planks), and the table. On our last turn over on that side they added the tire and chute after the table. Jedi did well if the tire was the first obstacle, but he struggled to get it after the table -- the allure of the chute was too great, I'm sure.
While waiting for our turns we worked on a variety of behaviors tonight. We played table games by sending around a cone and then playing on the table in the down position. I pulled out the tippy plank and we played on that for a bit. We also played on a wobble board -- I threw a balance disc in front of it so that Jedi wouldn't have to try to cram his whole body on the smaller wobble board. Because I don't feed Jedi dinner before we go to class (and because we don't get home until after 10:30), I have to make sure we spend at least some time doing "food behaviors" instead of just playing the whole time.
During the last ten minutes of class they had us work on call to heel exercises with a single jump. The instructors started to introduce some distractions while the dogs worked. They seemed to specifically target Jedi for the most part, which I think is great. I use food during call to heel stuff (there is no accuracy with toys...) and Jedi is absolutely 100% more easily distracted when working with food. I definitely lost him a few times to the squeaker, but he returned to work with me. When I switched to a toy and started to work his stay he was completely focused and never broke, including when the instructor ran by dragging the toy behind her on a leash. We ended class with a couple of turns at restrained recalls, which we got to do over on the turf side. Zoom, zoom!
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