Day 73 - Agility Class (week 5)

Jedi made it all night on the bed again last night. We might be starting to settle into a routine! Okay, it's probably a bit early to say that, but he's been doing well. I appreciate not waking up to barking. For breakfast this morning we went downstairs and played on the FitPaws stuff again (do you notice how I go in streaks with these things?). Today I switched it around and had Jedi put his front feet on the disc and find the pods with his hind feet. That was apparently super hard! I took the disc away and once he was consistently finding the pods with his back feet I added two more for the front. By the end we were getting all four feet on four separate pods.

When I got home from work we went out into the yard to work on heeling skills. It's been several days since we've done anything with this and Jedi took a bit to settle into it. It probably didn't help that I started with him on my left and that is his more difficult side. I'm just going to take a stab that it's because of my absolutely horrible ability to accurately deliver food on that side. Once Jedi stopped bouncing around and swinging his butt around to face me things went well. He did even better on my right, and then we ended on the left.

I opted not to run Jedi this afternoon to save him for his agility class tonight. When I think about it (especially as Jedi continues to bring me a toy and I continue to throw it across the room as I type this), this is probably the stupidest notion ever. I'm pretty certain I could run the snot out of him after lunch and he would be fully recovered by the time class starts at 6:15, especially with that two hour drive/nap. Regardless, he did fine this afternoon without play time. He threw a toy at me briefly but managed to mostly nap the afternoon away. Even then, he slept the whole way to Middleton. He's such a good traveler.

We had another fun night at our agility foundations class. My little group started out on the side doing the jump (no bars) pinwheel. We waited for our turn by practicing bottoms, which was pretty challenging for Jedi because the travel plank was right next to the divider, behind which was much tunnel fun and the most squeaking I think we've ever heard (someone was trying very hard to keep their dog's attention and he didn't give a lick about the toy she had -- but Jedi did). He stayed with me and gave me some good bottoms, though. We started with food and then moved on to his ball on a rope.

When it was our turn for the pinwheel the instructor made me stand in the center. That's like my "no fly zone" in agility, as I don't do well standing in one place (this comes from Secret's motivational issues and the need to always be in motion to keep her driving). Thankfully this is only my problem and Jedi was go-go-go and didn't care if I was moving or not. The instructor quickly started to push the standards further apart so that Jedi would need to work to find them a bit more. He didn't have any problems with this and even got the one that the instructor sneaked out when my back was turned. Because pinwheels are dreadfully boring, I threw in some wrap/front crosses for some changes of direction.

Our next station was the tunnel, where tonight they were working on gaining more independence with the tunnel entry and being able to send the dog from an angle. I probably shouldn't have Jedi do stuff that is so much more advanced than the other dogs in the class, but he's fun, so I do. I varied it up on each turn and was able to set him up 10+ feet to the side of the entrance and send him, as well as stand 3/4 of the way down the tunnel and send him back up to find the entrance. He sure does love his tunnels. I even threw in a rear cross on one of them, but I'm sure he didn't even notice it since he's just running after his toy when he blasts out.

Next up they took us into the turf training space next to our training ring. I wasn't sure what fun we were in for in there, but it ended up just being an introduction to the bang game. Well, truly it was just an introduction to the sound a teeter makes when it hits the ground. Everyone was supposed to stuff their dog with treats as the teeter banged. I just used this time to tug with Jedi. He was only about 5' away from the teeter and he never so much as flinched when it banged.

Our next exercise was a figure-eight around traffic cones. Again, here's another instance where I almost feel guilty running Jedi next to everyone else, but he's been playing this game for a while. He did super and only snuck around me once. Because his cone work involves so much energy output and running out of him, I ended the exercise with Jedi before the rotation was done and we went and found a wobble board to play on instead. Again, we struggled a bit because Jedi heard all of the tunnel fun going on next door and said he'd rather go do that. He conceded and stuck with me, but I had to grab his leash several times as he attempted to join the tunnel party.

Finally we switched again and Jedi got to get his tunnel fix. During this rotation they started to add more of a bend to the tunnel. I continued to play with sending from different angles and Jedi didn't even seem to notice the bend (this was the first time he's seen that). Eventually even more of a curve was added. I got greedy with some of my sends and attempted to do a super "fancy" send to the the entry from the back end of the curve. This resulted in Jedi circling the entire tunnel several times, so I stopped trying to do advanced stuff and made sure he could be successful.

We got to do a couple of restrained recalls to end the night. On my first turn I did the "hide the toy" bit that we did at our seminar this weekend. My intention was for Jedi to come up on my left, but that little stinker started to dive for the right -- I think because the tunnel (folded down so the dogs couldn't get in) was on that side. I quickly dropped the toy down and got him back up on my left. He did better the next time. While the instructor was telling everyone what to work on for next week I worked on having Jedi wait while I got ahead and then released him as I took off running. I don't know if it was the toy (racoon tail) or the presence of the tunnel, but he had a really hard time holding his position for this today.

Jedi looked beat at the end of class tonight. Really, though, tonight's exercises amounted to nearly a solid hour of running (and tugging) for Jedi. He ran through the jump standards, he ran around the cones, and he ran through the tunnel. In addition, he sucked down nearly the entire bottle of water I'd brought along. Jedi was more unsettled on the drive home than I think I've ever seen him. He barked at me a couple of times around Baraboo, but we were still about 40 minutes from home when he started to get very shrill and insistent. This is not normal for him at all, so I finally pulled off at New Lisbon and stopped at a gas station to let him out. He peed a ton right away (note, he emptied himself of everything before we left CSZ) and then had an absolute explosion out of his rear. I'm not sure if all of that food from this weekend finally caught up with him? He also had a bit at class last night, which probably didn't help, either.

At any rate, that solved things and the rest of the drive home was quiet again. Jedi got gobs of pumpkin for dinner tonight since I figured he didn't need any more kibble rotting in his gut for the day (he got pretty much his full dinner ration at class). He certainly seems to feel fine and has been running around since we got home. I believe tonight he'll be sleeping out of the crate no matter where he decides to sleep, just so he can get that rumbly gut outside if/when needed.