Day 45 - Agility Class (week 1)

Tonight Jedi and I had our first night of agility foundations class at Canine Sports Zone! This is the first group class I've been a participant in (versus teaching) for eight years! Crazy. Not only that, but it's a two-hour drive each way. Yup, I'm crazy. That said, Kaiser, Secret, and Kizzy were all trained exclusively at home and all three struggled when they started trialing (despite going to trials all of the time). Because of this, I am going to make an active effort to work Jedi around other working dogs as much as I possibly can.

Jedi was a bit of a cranky-pants again at breakfast. I swear, if I give up and go to feeding one meal out of a bowl it's going to be breakfast. I don't know if he's just not a morning dog or what, but it takes him a while to turn on in the morning. Maybe we just need to drop pivots in the morning and do stuff he thinks is "fun." This morning I tried to start with full pivots on the balance disc and it took about five minutes (I timed it) before he decided to interact with me. Once he offered a couple of circles (he only seems to go right now) I quit and we moved on to stuff he finds more fun.

When I got home from work I logged on before getting Jedi's lunch and I ended up getting sucked into a call. This meant lunch was delayed, but strangely Jedi just immediately crashed on the couch. Granted, my house is 80 degrees because I'm too cheap to run the air conditioning, so all of the dogs are fairly inactive right now. Once my call was done I took Jedi down into the basement where it was cooler. We did just a very brief session of pivot to the leg and then went and spent the rest of his lunch on the treadmill. We went up to 1.8 mph today!

I skipped playtime after lunch today because of Jedi's class this evening. Nobody seemed terribly bothered by this and they slept most of the afternoon.

We left for Middleton a little after 4:00. I suppose the nice part about having a two-hour drive is that even if Jedi runs around like a loon all day, at least he'll get a nap in before class. He was a nice quiet traveler like usual, but when we got to Canine Sports Zone he was ready to go! Apparently he already equates the facility with fun stuff, because he was dragging me to the door and had to be reminded to go potty.

Not surprisingly, Jedi is the youngest dog in the class. I think the next youngest is the 5-month old German Shepherd puppy, but the majority of the class is around a year or less. There are six dogs total with two instructors and an assistant, so I can definitely appreciate the amount of hands-on instruction available!

I like how the class is structured. I've never taken a true foundations class before, as when I started with Luke it was very much a "get on the equipment" beginners class. This class is covering important things like hind end awareness, relationship building, playing, building drive, etc. Tonight started with an intro to the clicker. While everyone else was working on loading the clicker, I had Jedi target the food lid and then we did some leg pivots. I was expecting Jedi to be a bit distracted by all of the clickers going off around him, but he didn't seem to notice them at all.

After this intro they split us into two groups of three. Jedi's group worked on shaping exercises first. They had balance discs that they wanted the dog to interact with. Jedi did some full pivots on his, then I had him back on to the fully inflated disc for some extra challenge. Yes, we did let everyone know that Jedi has been doing these exercises for several weeks now.

When we switched sides we were introduced to a chute barrel. We were asked to shape it at first -- I'm not huge on using the clicker for actual agility objects, but whatever. Jedi went straight to it and I threw some hotdogs after him. Ho-hum, he just doesn't care much for food. After that the instructor held the dogs while we called them through. It took Jedi a moment to figure out he had to go through the barrel to get to me, but once we got him straightened out he was fine. After that I determined it was easiest if I just did a collar grab to aim him at the entrance. When I released him he ran straight through to his thrown toy on the other side.

Our groups switched sides again and this time we were given the little raised planks to work on. I think they were just working on walking back and forth across them, but I used the opportunity to work on Jedi's bottom while crossing (vs backing onto the plank). He did super well, so I started to work on adding speed. He can hold on to the bottom pretty well on my right side. It's a bit tougher on the left (he overshoots and wants to back on). I started with food but moved to a toy when Jedi was fixating on our neighbor's toy and left me twice to go try to join their party.

On that subject, I learned tonight that Jedi likes squeaky toys. Really likes them. I got to thinking and I don't really have many toys around here that squeak, mostly because they seem to instantly die. My food stuffable tug toys have squeakers in them, so maybe I'll throw one of them into the bag for next week. I could keep Jedi's attention if I had a toy, but the squeaker trumped food by far (even hotdogs). I rotated through toys often tonight to keep things fresh and interesting. I don't want to turn this into a game of "I won't work for that toy, I want a different one" (I have pandered to both Secret and Kizzy in this regard) -- but I don't think I have to worry about that. I wasn't swapping toys because Jedi wasn't interested in them, and he was always happy to take whatever was in front of him.

We swapped sides one more time and this time our group was introduced to a tunnel. I was a little surprised to see that the tunnel was expanded to its full length of 15' -- and it was a dark tunnel, to boot. Usually when I introduce tunnels for the first time I keep it scrunched up short. Nobody seemed to have any problems with it, and they did shorten it some for the one dog who was a little less confident. Jedi went in immediately, but came back out the entrance when I threw the toy. I cheated and threw the toy through the tunnel and of course then he went all the way through. After that all I needed to do was a collar grab and he would bolt through when released (toy thrown to the other end). I appreciated the reminder to work from both sides. I'm always terrible about doing that, especially when it forces me to throw the toy with my left hand.

The class ended with restrained recalls. Heck, I'll drive two hours just to have someone hold my dog for restrained recalls! Jedi got to go first since he knows the drill and could show everyone the purpose behind the exercise. He sure does love playing this game. I was happily surprised at how well he did as the rest of the class went through their recalls. He screams bloody murder when we do them in the classes I teach, so I assumed he'd get similarly amped up in this environment. I kept him busy with the toy, though, and he was pretty good. We had just enough time to let everyone get in a second recall. The instructors got a kick out of Jedi and said they could see his eyes bug out from being so wired. Hey, at least he wasn't screaming. Well, other than when we entered the ring for his second turn.

We got a homework handout which didn't have anything new for us with the exception of introducing the dog to going under something like a sheet or shower curtain. It sounds like next week they will start letting out the chute fabric. I suppose I could drag my chute out of the garage and play this weekend, but then again there is something nice about having help through these introductions. Now that Jedi appears to have figured out the tunnel, I suppose I should get those out as well.

I think this is going to be a fun class and it will be a great learning experience for both Jedi and myself. Look, I already learned something -- that Jedi can't focus around squeaker toys! Something to work on!

Other than grumbling when he ran out of water (still need to get a bigger water dish for that crate), the ride home was pretty quiet. When you think of it, that's a pretty exhausting hour for a puppy -- at least a puppy like Jedi who plays the entire time. When we got home we fed the rest of the dogs and Jedi quickly worked through what was left of his dinner. (We got home at 9:20, so that's not terrible.) He's been running around like a loon for the last two hours now. I can't blame him, it's a lot cooler/nicer out now -- and he appears to be having fun eating the ice that was dumped out of the cooler.