Day 66 - Agility Class (week 4) (4 months old!)

Jedi is four months old today! We had our class at Canine Sports Zone tonight and everyone seemed to remark yet again how much bigger he's gotten. It is true, though, he has sprouted legs recently! He's definitely starting to look more grown up lately. I'd be okay with the puppy fuzz going away at any time here -- I'm ready to see what kind of coat Jedi will end up with!

Because Jedi was so extraordinarily tired last night I decided to try letting him stay out of the crate again last night. I tried to get him to start out on the bed, but that lasted all of about five minutes. He put himself into his crate right away and I'm pretty sure he didn't move from there, at least not before I fell asleep myself. This morning he was down on the smaller bed on the floor next to me. Jedi is randomly jumping up on the bed at various times when I get ready in the morning and he can clearly get up there fairly easily now. I'm not sure why exactly he opts not to sleep on the big bed, but I guess Secret is largely the same way. Maybe it will change one day. The good news is that he seems to do well with freedom overnight, at least when he's really tired.

Inspired by feedback after finally posting my last video to our puppy class with Silvia Trkman, this morning I took Jedi into the bedroom and we worked on putting a variety of stuff into a smaller food dish. We started out in the living room and it soon became obvious that this is not a behavior that can be done around the scavenger dogs, and Jedi got upset when they were pushing in on his space. We also worked on the hold behavior using a smaller object in an attempt to get him to be able to support the object on his own.

Lunch was a repeat of breakfast. I grabbed a few additional objects to have Jedi transfer to the bowl. One of these objects was a deck of cards still wrapped in plastic. I'm not sure if it was the slippery plastic, the weight, or the shape of this object, but Jedi was not a fan to start with. We worked through it with baby steps, though, and he was eventually able to pick it up. I also used an edible object (a Dingo bone) to let him know that he can, indeed, work with food and not eat it. There was some confusion at first, but Jedi did a great job.

Because we had our agility foundations class tonight, I opted to not play with Jedi this afternoon. He did surprisingly well with this lack of activity, but I think that goes to show just how tired he was yesterday. Additionally, the ride to Middleton was a quiet one with more napping.

Jedi was pretty much a rock star at class tonight. Sometimes I feel almost bad that this 4-month-old puppy is a star pupil and is doing more than anyone else. Everyone seems to compare their dog to Jedi and I wish they wouldn't. In addition to the fact that I'm on my 5th dog playing this game, and the fact that Jedi has been "in training" since he turned 8 weeks old (or even sooner, if you count all of the wonderful work his breeder did) -- Jedi was more or less bred to excel at this. I tell you, this puppy is everything I wanted and more (okay, maybe a split face would have been the ideal puppy, lol). He's something special and while I love that everyone sees this, I just hope nobody feels they are behind or anything.

We started the night in the group that was being introduced to a tiny pinwheel of jump standards. Only one dog was working at a time, so we were to work on targeting behaviors until it was our turn. We did bottoms on the plank and played on the the wobble board quite a bit. I took Jedi's leash off when it was our turn at the jumps because I didn't want to risk it getting caught on a jump cup and hanging him up. I feel fortunate that he's so focused and good at sticking with me that I don't have to worry about him. I didn't know what to expect from this exercise since we've never done it before, but apparently the exercise was similar enough to sending around cones because Jedi picked it up immediately and was able to do it in both directions. The instructor had me add in a fourth jump, but it was very awkward to stand in the middle of all that so we did a front cross to get the fourth one instead. While Jedi did a great job, he did show that he's not perfect with his fun little habit of skirting behind me when sending off my left side.

When we rotated to the other side we got to play with the chute. I told the instructor that Jedi would be fine with the fabric dropped and I was right. While everyone else was working on building drive and getting their dog to go all the way through the chute, on my turns we focused on being able to wait until released before blasting through the chute. Jedi is working on perfecting his border collie hover/scootch, so we'll be keeping an eye on that. In general, though, he did exceptionally well and it was great proofing for his wait. Waits in front of tunnels and chutes are hard.

The next rotation was pretty much Jedi's best thing (other than running through tunnels at least) -- They brought out large traffic cones for us to start working on sending our dogs around. Yeah, well, that one we know! It's always good to generalize the behavior in a new place with new equipment, though. I eventually pulled Jedi aside to ask for some quiet time because he'd been go-go-go the whole night. This was when he realized that the dogs on the other side of the barrier were going through the tunnel, and this made him pretty much lose his mind. I was able to get him back with both hot dogs and toys, but if I let up for even a moment he was screaming and trying to run over to the other side.

Thankfully we were able to switch rotations so that Jedi would get a turn at his tunnel. Tonight we (well, Jedi at least) worked on sending from a less than straight-on angle, which was no problem for him. He's such a crack head about tunnels. By the time we finished his tongue was hanging out, but Jedi was still ready for more action.

I'm proud of how well Jedi kept it together tonight. I don't know if it was the storm going on outside or what, but the class was just wired tonight. Unfortunately many of the other dogs in class have a really hard time focusing around Jedi. He doesn't make any noise, but he is playing almost 100% of the time and I guess that's just distracting. It's unfortunate when the other dogs get away and come after him. Tonight I stuck my foot in the other dog's face when she started going after Jedi with her teeth (it's another border collie, I get the behavior but you are not putting your teeth on my puppy). The poodle got loose at the end of the night, too, but I just stopped tugging with Jedi while its owner retrieved it and we didn't have any problems. The nice part is that Jedi appears completely oblivious to these interactions, but we really don't need any negative associations to start forming now.

We drove home through a heck of a thunderstorm and Jedi has been high as a kite since we got home. I'm thinking this will be a crate night, if the wild-eyed stare he's giving me right now is any indication of his readiness to go to bed.