Ahoy, Mates! A Fun Agility-Filled Week

Ahoy, mates!  In honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I thought I would smartly (pirate translation = "do something quickly") share our week's progress in agility.  We had a blast in Thursday and Saturday classes.  I have been so impressed with  how well Jefferson seems to be reading my cues, even if I  might mess up once in a while.  Looks like Jefferson had been "unleashing his inner buccaneer!"

Thursday night we ran a Master Level Standard course, and Jefferson did a wonderful job in getting his weave poles and staying motivated for me during our run.  I was exceptionally proud of his getting his weave poles; more importantly, if he pulls out at the 10th pole, he "lets" me come back and have a do-over.  This is HUGE for Team J-Dawg since he has been so sensitive to my mistakes and reluctant to any do-overs.  Aye!  Aye! (pirate translation = "I'll get right on that!")  Another training tip I gleaned from Thursday night is that I watched Jefferson run rather than looking at the next obstacle.  My looking at him caused him to stop, look at me, pant and avast (pirate translation = "stop and give attention...get off!")  This is another a-ha moment (as Oprah would say).  Once I focused on the obstacle ahead and trusted Jefferson to run the course with me, he did and we were extremely successful.  So, my goals for the next few weeks are to use more of my peripheral vision and trust Jefferson to take the obstacles.  

Still another learning moment occurred when we were performing the running contact on the dogwalk.  I have to admit, I have not taken the time to train the running dogwalk as I learned earlier this year during the Daisy Peel seminar.  Between work and other obligations, I have not put in the time needed to gain the consistency in Jefferson's performance.  However, I did experiment with some handling moves this week and noticed that when I applied pressure to Jefferson when he was running the down portion of the dogwalk, he got his contact.  In other words, no matter how far out I started when he ran up the dogwalk, when he was on his descent, I pushed the line to apply pressure.  Of course, this will not work if the dogwalk is in the advanced gamble similar to May's gamblers course.  I will need to work making sure J (pirate translation = "Jefferson") knows his criteria and bring out the clicker and a training buddy to help me.

Saturday we ran a Master's level jumpers course and J did so well!  I handled the serpentines and threadles fairly clean and J read my handling.  Arr! (pirate translation = "yes!")  We did not do well the third time we ran the course...Arrgh (pirate translation = "sound you make when you sit on a pin!")  I was tired; J was tired; and honestly, Team J-dawg does not thrive very well with repetition.   We both get easily bored.  If we got it right the first time, why keep doing it over?  Oh, well...

And on Sunday, after an "elimination" 1st run (pooping right before entering the ring and finishing up with peeing after about 3 obstacles....Arrgh), we had a nice 2nd run and J stayed with me.  Only one stoppage on the course, but rather than stand there, I looked at him and used our new command, "Here" and he took off and we finished clean.  Success!!!  Although we still have to set the sails to be (pirate translation  = "more work to do") this week's training had made me so Grog-filled (pirate translation = "happy").

 "To err is human, to arr is pirate!"  ~ Captain Crook