Tonight was Jedi's fifth week of his Foundations 2 agility class at Canine Sports Zone. Because it was a class night, that meant that Jedi didn't really do diddly squat today up to when we left at 5:30. We arrived about 10 minutes early. Normally we wander around a bit and Jedi uses this time to empty himself before class. Tonight, though, it was all I could do to get him to even pee. He just wanted to play. And play. And play some more. I finally gave up and we just went inside.
As usual, Jedi had an action-packed night that mostly involved running for the entire hour. I spent some time at the beginning just having him do tricks like "pretty" to work him through some of his dinner. We moved on to working bottoms on the travel plank. I added a cone before the plank to build up some speed and momentum. I'm pretty thrilled with how well Jedi did with his bottoms tonight! He was sliding into end position and sticking them nicely. He only overshot a couple. We had a lot of parties for his super awesome bottoms.
Over on the other side we worked a small sequence that had two jumps straight to a table followed by a triple jump. Jedi had bars on the ground, so it was just another set of (wide) standards. The other dog in our rotation was having some motivation issues, so while the instructor worked with them on some things I did my own thing with the jumps. One new skill I introduced to Jedi was a send to the backside, pull through and push on -- I'm sure there is some technical name for this that is totally escaping me. It's good to work on this pull through skill since he's so prone to running wide and around everything. We also did figure eights around the wings, including rear cross "flips." The instructor called Jedi a show-off. ;o)
I spent some time sitting with Jedi at the super-inflated balance disc for a while to get him to settle/cool down a bit and to get the rest of his dinner in him. Our partner dog was really struggling with the wobble board, so one of the instructors borrowed Jedi to show the dog there was nothing to be afraid of (not sure if it worked, but Jedi is always game to help). After a while we were called into the turf arena for Jedi's turn at some jump work. The instructor set up three jumps in a big, totally flat serpentine. I'm pretty sure the instructors all think that I've put more training into Jedi than I actually have. lol She sounded surprised when I said, yeah, he doesn't do that yet. Additionally, that's not how I typically go about introducing the serpentine skill, but we humored her. I was most impressed when I set Jedi up at an angle at the first jump and released him while I stood at the second jump -- and he went through the jump standards! I didn't really worry about the third jump in the sequence, I just tossed his toy in that direction.
Back on the other side the new sequence was jump, table, triple jump, tunnel, tire. The tunnel was turned into a full C shape, which is the biggest curve we've seen in class so far. I thought nothing of it, though, since Jedi has seen a similar curve at home and well, I mean, it's a tunnel! He had a fantastic send through the triple standard and barreled into the tunnel -- and then came flying back out the way he went in. Uh.... So we spent some time working on just going through the tunnel. I think Jedi went in and popped back out a good five times. I finally asked him to go the other way and he went all the way through that time. After a couple more tries he went through the other way and then all was well with the world. It was a very, very dark tunnel. I guess he just didn't know what it was at first! I was able to do several more sends into the tunnel before we ended our evening.
One of the instructors asked if I planned on signing Jedi up for the Agility Foundations 3 class. I mean, as much as I'd love to spend another 6 weeks driving two hours each way... Jedi is done with agility classes until he gets older and is ready to join a handling class. My preference is to teach obstacle performance (my way) at home, and there is a great deal that Jedi won't be introduced to until next spring when the snow melts. I'm not entirely sure what the Foundations 3 class consists of, but my assumption is that they need to start introducing contacts and weaves at some point and Jedi won't be seeing those for a while. We've gotten everything I wanted out of these first two sessions of classes and Jedi is an absolute rock star about working around other dogs. We'll see what training opportunities we can scrounge up this winter and hope that we start to see our classmates at trials in the future!
Tonight was Jedi's fifth week of his Foundations 2 agility class at Canine Sports Zone. Because it was a class night, that meant that Jedi didn't really do diddly squat today up to when we left at 5:30. We arrived about 10 minutes early. Normally we wander around a bit and Jedi uses this time to empty himself before class. Tonight, though, it was all I could do to get him to even pee. He just wanted to play. And play. And play some more. I finally gave up and we just went inside.
As usual, Jedi had an action-packed night that mostly involved running for the entire hour. I spent some time at the beginning just having him do tricks like "pretty" to work him through some of his dinner. We moved on to working bottoms on the travel plank. I added a cone before the plank to build up some speed and momentum. I'm pretty thrilled with how well Jedi did with his bottoms tonight! He was sliding into end position and sticking them nicely. He only overshot a couple. We had a lot of parties for his super awesome bottoms.
Over on the other side we worked a small sequence that had two jumps straight to a table followed by a triple jump. Jedi had bars on the ground, so it was just another set of (wide) standards. The other dog in our rotation was having some motivation issues, so while the instructor worked with them on some things I did my own thing with the jumps. One new skill I introduced to Jedi was a send to the backside, pull through and push on -- I'm sure there is some technical name for this that is totally escaping me. It's good to work on this pull through skill since he's so prone to running wide and around everything. We also did figure eights around the wings, including rear cross "flips." The instructor called Jedi a show-off. ;o)
I spent some time sitting with Jedi at the super-inflated balance disc for a while to get him to settle/cool down a bit and to get the rest of his dinner in him. Our partner dog was really struggling with the wobble board, so one of the instructors borrowed Jedi to show the dog there was nothing to be afraid of (not sure if it worked, but Jedi is always game to help). After a while we were called into the turf arena for Jedi's turn at some jump work. The instructor set up three jumps in a big, totally flat serpentine. I'm pretty sure the instructors all think that I've put more training into Jedi than I actually have. lol She sounded surprised when I said, yeah, he doesn't do that yet. Additionally, that's not how I typically go about introducing the serpentine skill, but we humored her. I was most impressed when I set Jedi up at an angle at the first jump and released him while I stood at the second jump -- and he went through the jump standards! I didn't really worry about the third jump in the sequence, I just tossed his toy in that direction.
Back on the other side the new sequence was jump, table, triple jump, tunnel, tire. The tunnel was turned into a full C shape, which is the biggest curve we've seen in class so far. I thought nothing of it, though, since Jedi has seen a similar curve at home and well, I mean, it's a tunnel! He had a fantastic send through the triple standard and barreled into the tunnel -- and then came flying back out the way he went in. Uh.... So we spent some time working on just going through the tunnel. I think Jedi went in and popped back out a good five times. I finally asked him to go the other way and he went all the way through that time. After a couple more tries he went through the other way and then all was well with the world. It was a very, very dark tunnel. I guess he just didn't know what it was at first! I was able to do several more sends into the tunnel before we ended our evening.
One of the instructors asked if I planned on signing Jedi up for the Agility Foundations 3 class. I mean, as much as I'd love to spend another 6 weeks driving two hours each way... Jedi is done with agility classes until he gets older and is ready to join a handling class. My preference is to teach obstacle performance (my way) at home, and there is a great deal that Jedi won't be introduced to until next spring when the snow melts. I'm not entirely sure what the Foundations 3 class consists of, but my assumption is that they need to start introducing contacts and weaves at some point and Jedi won't be seeing those for a while. We've gotten everything I wanted out of these first two sessions of classes and Jedi is an absolute rock star about working around other dogs. We'll see what training opportunities we can scrounge up this winter and hope that we start to see our classmates at trials in the future!
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