Agility training

[crysania]

I will also admit here that I do mostly non-verbal because I have exercise-induced asthma and when I get out there and really moving I may not be ABLE to say much. lol

[Laurelin]

Wah, we're on official break right now till September.

[SaraB]

Originally Posted by Laurelin

Wah, we're on official break right now till September.

Boooooooooo.

New announcement, Zuma is now officially The Zuminator NA NAJ. Finally grabbed that last novice standard leg last Sunday!

[AdrianneIsabel]

Originally Posted by SaraB

New announcement, Zuma is now officially The Zuminator NA NAJ. Finally grabbed that last novice standard leg last Sunday!

Congrats!!

Sloan is on a break too. I'm bummed and I may steal her for that last jumpers Q this fall though. Meanwhile she's going for her CDX in a few weeks so she's busy enough as is.

Backup and I took a break and this morning revisited our weaves. We're still having trouble and I'm not sure how worth it it is right now. Slightly open he can hit 6, closed he wraps on 4 and never gives me the chance to throw his reward to the end. I switched to the manners minder though which seemed to be helping because he was having a hungry day, he rarely is hungry though, hopefully this continues.

In other news his distance and hand signal sits and downs are getting stronger so I guess that's cool. LOL

[SaraB]

Originally Posted by AdrianneIsabel

Congrats!!

Sloan is on a break too. I'm bummed and I may steal her for that last jumpers Q this fall though. Meanwhile she's going for her CDX in a few weeks so she's busy enough as is.

Backup and I took a break and this morning revisited our weaves. We're still having trouble and I'm not sure how worth it it is right now. Slightly open he can hit 6, closed he wraps on 4 and never gives me the chance to throw his reward to the end. I switched to the manners minder though which seemed to be helping because he was having a hungry day, he rarely is hungry though, hopefully this continues.

In other news his distance and hand signal sits and downs are getting stronger so I guess that's cool. LOL

One step at a time! Distance sits and downs lead to distance obstacle discrimination in the future!

I feel you on the weaves though. Zuma nails every entrance I throw at her in training but put her in a trial setting and she misses 85% of the time. Right now I have her watching fast dogs weave and then sending her in difficult entries right after trying to get her high and she's nailing that too even though her brains leave the second she sees another dog running. One day we'll get it, just need to keep practicing until it's second nature.

[Laurelin]

You can come work Mia's sit/stays. She does GREAT with certain obstacles then stick her in front of something else and she's creeper. The tire jump seems to be the worst. Second half of class we had to have someone hold her.

[Finkie_Mom]

Originally Posted by Laurelin

Wah, we're on official break right now till September.

Ugh I hate breaks from class - I look forward to them so much every week. It feels so odd to not go.

Originally Posted by SaraB

New announcement, Zuma is now officially The Zuminator NA NAJ. Finally grabbed that last novice standard leg last Sunday!

YAY! Go Zuma! That's awesome

How do you guys feel about Fun Runs? I've sort of decided that I was going to do as many as I can with Kimma essentially until next Spring, but I've had a few people saying that I should just start trialing her. But really isn't a Fun Run a trial without so many people? Once she's not anxious, she's pretty good/responsive, and she's at the point now where she's confident on all equipment (even at new places). The only thing is her 12 weaves are still a bit slow, but we're working on them and her 6 are relatively fast. I've done 3 so far (2 runs at one location, and one at another), and after she got her sniffing done here www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbLoy9McXgw she was good. (I shouldn't have let her go near this turf beforehand - while we were waiting to go in the ring, she was smelling it and trying to roll in it as it's a surface we've never been on so I wasn't terribly surprised when she went off to sniff). Our instructor seems to think we should be competing (she was surprised when I said I hadn't entered us in our club's trial in Sept), but I just don't know. Am I answering my own question here?

[MandyPug]

Oh I guess I should mention in here too that Izzie earned two more titles this past weekend. Agility Intermediate Select and Agility Intermediate Jumpers Select in CKC. Only her second CKC trial ever, but CKC isn't as hard as AAC.

[Shai]

Yay Zuma! Yay Izzie!

I guess I should update too? Basically we've been closed out of a bunch of trials becauae there aren't enough trials to support the demand here. We did get into one (Mir & Web) and Mira picked up a QQ, a masters JWW leg, around 50 points, and 3 placements...two 2nds and a 3rd iirc. Tight spreads on the ribbons between her and a friend with two of the best dogs in our height class...there was a 0.5 second spread btw 1st and 3rd for Mira's yellow.

Also pulled Webby out of retirement since Kim is out...apparently he wants to make that permanent because in his first 4days of trialing in ExcB (he got into a trial that Mir did not...closed out) he earned 4 straight QQs lol. And placed 4th twice in classes of 16-17 dogs lol. Running a midsize dog has been lots of fun for me...more strides to work with and definitely less demanding on me as a handler! With Mir, being a 24" dog on tight AKC courses means there is just no margin for error at all...which is fun and a thrill but a little of leeway is good for the handler's soul sometimes lol!

Anyway...novel. Sorry!

[BostonBanker]

Congrats to everyone on their recent success!

I have nothing against fun runs as long as the equipment/footing is safe (we have some around here that are...sketchy). Great place to practice some trial skills without risking so much money

Meg recently went to one of the few AKC trials we do (can't say no to a trial 20 minutes from home). It was her third AKC trial ever, and she finished up both her open titles and got her first Excellent jumpers Q. She NQ for the first time ever in AKC the first class, when she was so high she missed her dogwalk contact by about 18', ran ahead and took the next tunnel, and then came back up the dogwalk to see what was taking me so long. And to think I had considered retiring her completely because she seemed so lackluster in practice! Apparently she believes she should only have to trial, not train. Fair enough, at this point! I'm holding off on trialling her anymore until Gusto is ready to go, just because I'm putting so much into him right now. I'll let her run a bit when he does though, and maybe polish off some metallic titles in our favorite classes.

Gusto continues to amaze me, and occasionally make me want to boot him over the fence. He sets the bar so high for himself when he's on, that when he is a typical 14 month old puppy, I think he's stupid and bad and I'm a terrible trainer and we should quit. We are going to a 2-day training camp next weekend with three great trainers (Terri Cesarek, Monique Plinck and Tracy Sklenar), and I am both excited and terrified! Hopefully he doesn't make too much of a fool of us.