Go Kimma go!!
Yay for mini-courses with the paps! Very cool.
I can't wait to see how Payton does, he's going to be great.
Well... Zuma and I have had some great learning experiences the last couple weeks with agility. I've been taking her to a group class taught by my mentor once a week because she's started to get extremely spastic when watching other dogs run at trials during our warm ups. It was bad enough that I was having issues keeping her focused on me before and during our runs. So back to mat work, crate games and LAT.
I'm really, really glad to get her working around other dogs again (other than my trainer's BC). She works at a completely different level and it's difficult to train her to keep her brain when she's not working at that level. However, there are risks that come with it. A couple weeks ago during our first run of the class, she stumbled when she flew over the dog walk and ended up with a nasty zinger for a minute or two. Once she had walked that off, I put her in a 2o2o at the bottom of the dogwalk to continue the sequence. The next obstacle was a chute, she ended up running into the hard edge (even though it's padded, it's still unforgiving). That was all self-destruct Zuma I could take for the evening so we just worked on LAT and controlled "with me's" or the rest of the class.
Wednesday of this week, we attended a Karen Holik "Squares" seminar (NOT BOXES! lol). I signed her up because I know we struggle with this. I adore Karen and learned so much and hopefully some tweaks to our current training style will get Zuma and I more connected. It was rather discouraging though only being able to do 3 jumps out of the 11 jumps sequence, but hopefully one day we will be better.
One major thing that I'm learning from this experience is that EVERY dog has their own problems when it comes to agility. From an outsider perspective, I have the upper hand in the sport because Zuma is fast and in every way your ideal agility candidate. However, I wish people would see the amount of hard work that goes into controlling and channeling that drive. While it may take most dogs 3-4 passes at a drill to get the correct lines, we are still struggling several sessions later or we may not even get to do the entire drill. She does have her strengths, I will not deny that. However, she has her weaknesses like every other dog, they are just different. Basically, if I hear "Well you have it easy, your dog has drive" or something along those lines one more time, I may just freak out a bit. :rofl1:
Zinga is doing really well with her foundation stuff. I am sooo excited to see what she has to offer. Also, she's a screamer and it makes me laugh.