A most enjoyable class

I don't know if it is because I haven't worked Clover a lot in the last couple of weeks, that class was cancelled last week because of rain or what, but I enjoyed last night's competition agility class even more than I usually do. There are only 3 participants in the competition class(4 dogs) and we get a lot of individual attention.

It was games night in class. The first game that was set up was a new AKC F.A.S.T class course. The rules are fairly simple, you create your own course and obtain as many points as you can in 31 seconds. Each obstacle is assigned points. You have to also complete a distance gamble. You get deducted time for every second you go over. It is a new game being introduced into the AKC. I have not seen it yet incompetition, but I think we will run it at our February YAC trial.

The second game we ran was called snakes and Ladders. I have never heard of it before. I guess it is an event that Dogs On Course in North America has. The official rules can be found on their web site. Basically, you can make up any course that you want, you just have to alternate and tunnel or weave with tunnel. I enjoyed this one. I don't think I will ever compete in DOCNA though, so I won't see it competition.

Clover did fairly well with the weaves. I had to restart her most of the time on the sand ring, but after class we went to the grass ring. Clover never missed a pole in the grass ring. We also worked on speeding up her contacts. I gave her a good workout after class.

Ring Rental

This past weekend was gorgeous, so I decided to rent a ring at teamworks to run Clover. Lately, OK, she always has slacked off with weave poles in the sand ring. So I thought I would try to work on weave proofing. At first I set up a set of 18 weave poles to help prevent Clover from "counting" weave poles. I then set up a set of six weaves, a tunnel and set of 12 weave poles.

Clover didn't do as well as I was hoping. She went through the weaves well one or two times then she started slacking off. When she gets tired, she starts skipping the 3 rd pole or one in the middle. I may be inconsistent when working on weave poles with her. If I make her redo the weaves, it demotivates her and she performs even worse. I may have made a mistake in the past by just pushing her through the weaves even if she missed one. I may have inadvertently reinforced her to miss poles.

When working on 6 weave poles at home, she is usually flawless. In the sand ring, she usually does fine 1 or 2 times in practice then slacks off. During trials, she doesn't do weaves on the first attemp, she herds the first pole and looks at me. I then have to restart her, which confuses and demotivates her. If any one has any Ideas on how I can more efficiently train weaves, speak up... I am all ears.

Last week we purchased a new digital camera, a Canon Digital RebalXT. So you may start to find more pictures on Flickr.

Show-N-Go, COW and YAK Meeting.

This past weekend was a beautiful weekend to host an agility Show-N-Go. It was held at teamworks and I helped run it. I was able to run clover and she did fairly well although I noticed that she didn't want to properly do the weave poles in the sand ring, but did them in the grass ring. It must be due to all the training I do at home on the grass ring.

Competition agility class was cancelled on Tuesday night due rain, and I didn't have much opportunity to run Clover, so she was cranked when we finally took the Course at COW. We weren't able to run until later though because I attended the Youngsville agility club meeting. We prepared for the upcoming trial in November. Entrys close on Monday, so if you plan on entering, better do so soon. You can get the entry forms on the Youngsville agility club web site.

We also had a speaker from the Franklin County Humane society speak about the bad conditions at the county animal shelter.

It was a pretty cool night at COW. This is the kind of weather that Clover loves. She has a pretty thick coat and cannot stand much heat, so I usually have to watch it so I don't overheat her. But not last night. She just ran and ran and ran. We had a lot of fun.

Once again Clover did the weave poles flawlessly at in the grass ring but she had more difficulties in sand ring. I think I will have to rent the sand ring a couple of times just to practice on weave poles.

Mike Tickle, a fellow Teamworks agility addict just got another sheltie and started and agility blog.. Check it out..http://runninrowdy.blogspot.com/

Jump-Wrap, Jump-Wrap

Our Competition agility course were challenging last night, that is for sure! Michele based the courses on Masters jumpers courses this week at the USDAA trial. It contained lots of wraps and turns.

We ran 2 different jumpers courses and Clover did very well. If we were in competition, she surely would have qualified. This class is great because we discuss different approaches and ways to trim time off the courses by tightening the run.

After class I took Clover over to the grass ring and practiced contacts and weaves. Clover is still cautious on the contacts and she releases according to my body language, not verbally. That is something I am going to have to work more on.

I doubt that we will have Course of the week tonight because it is raining pretty hard now.

A trial without Clover competing.

There was not a lot of happening on the Clover training front last week, which was probably good, since it will give a chance for my shoulder to heal a little more.

On Tuesday Competition agility was cancelled because of rain. I did go to Course of the Week last week but didn't work too much because there were so many people there. I guess they were getting ready for the USDAA trial at Teamwork over the weekend.

The trial went pretty well. There were quite a few people there. I didn't enter Clover because of my shoulder, but I did help all day Saturday and half a day on Sunday. I was the dedicated timer in the sand ring on Saturday and in the grass ring on Sunday. I also helped build courses.

Teamworks purchased horns for their electronic timers, so there was a little learning curve for programming in the horns for classes like snooker and gamblers.

I made a trade with Michele. I purchased a triple jump from her a while back and she said that she regretted getting rid of it, so I traded it back to her in return for a tunnel. I didn't have any tunnels at home. I figured it would be easier to build a triple jump than a tunnel.

I missed not running in the trial, so when I got home I worked quite a bit with Clover. I guess that kind of defeats the purpose of not entering though. I am definitely entered in the next ones.