Cricket agility pics

We completed our level 1 class. Yay!!!!! There's a break in classes over the winter and classes start up again in February. The next class we are taking focuses mainly on the contacts and weaves so we can work on improving those.

I didn't take these pics

So.... I present to you Cricket's diploma


Practicing the A-frame. She did amazing her first few tries, but today she was distracted and I was tired so it took us a bit to warm up and we screwed up a little. I need to practice not turning towards her to try to stop her at the bottom of the Aframe on the contact and instead face forward holding a treat out at the bottom. She is so fast its hard getting to the other side before she does during training so we did it on leash most of the time





And now the jumps. She is pretty good at the jumps. Today she kept trying to turn towards me after the first jump instead of following my lead towards the next jump. I think in a big way it was my fault today though because I was seriously so tired.





Tire jump. She is wearing a leash in this pic I know. I have a tab leash but I forgot it and for some reason everytime she jumped the tire jump she got super excited and wanted to zoomie so we kept the leash on today to work on keeping her from zooming after jumping through



Practicing the teeter. She is only doing this leashed right now and she is doing super well on it. She has absolutely NO fear whatsoever of the teeter.





Tunnel. She got this one down super quick.



I love this photo but I just wish SHE was in focus

Waiting our turn


And because there just has to be a fail photo. This is Cricket going over the jump all wonky like. She wasn't even supposed to go over that jump. We were just walking past the jump and she decided she wanted to go over

Great shots! I love that first photo of her on the a-frame - got to love a dog who gets air . Personally, I'd be drilling a contact behavior on a plank rather than trying to slow that a-frame down to get it. I'd hate to kill off that super speed! She looks like such a fun girl. I think in a year or two, we will have to meet in the middle and run her and Gusto in pairs. I have a feeling they could take over the world together. Or we could run her, Meg and Gusto in team. She looks like their love child!

She looks great! Good girl, Cricket!
When I get my BC I'd love to do agility. Millie's too old, I think, though I've seen dogs about her age doing pretty well, actually. Besides that, I'm sure I totally screwed up what she'd actually have to learn with backyard agility with makeshift jumps, etc.

P.S. Cricket is my ideal brindle.
P.P.S. You also stole the name of the next female dog I got. >__< *spanks*

awesome pics!!!

What's the best way to work on the contact behavior on a plank? We start an actual contacts and weaves class in February, but I'd like to work with her more on getting the contacts down in the meantime so that when we take the class she be a little more on the ball with the contacts. I just want to make sure she learns everything correctly do we don't have to go back and repeat steps as much as possible.

And yes running her, Meg and Gusto in team would be SO much fun!

Cricket loved this class so much. As soon as we would pull into the parking lot she would be spinning circles in the car and crying for me to get her out of the car right NOW! She's completely bonkers for agility.

I did a lot of the backyard agility makeshift stuff with another dog I used to have. Rest her soul. I loved that dog so much.

I love brindling that's more of a copper color, but Cricket's type of brindling has really grown on me. I love her dark face too. She is seriously such a cool dog.

I love Cricket! She's SO gorgeous!

It looks like she's having a blast with agility!

I certainly don't know that I have the "best" way, but it has worked relatively well for us. Meg's contacts in training are near bombproof; in trials, she tends to lose it (not miss the contacts, but just not perform the behavior I am looking for). I think that it is because when I started trialling, I didn't have a planned behavior I trained - I just sort of baby-sat them and hoped for the best. Gusto's will be done more carefully, and we will see if it works!

I just had a board, about the size of the down part of a dogwalk, flat on the ground. I started just shaping the behavior I wanted (I'm an idiot, so I trained a foot touch to a piece of bath mat) on the ground, then quickly started putting it at the end of the board. Click/treat when she'd stop with her front feet on the mat and her back feet on the board. She got that quickly, so I started proofing it more and more - sending her from angles, sending her ahead of me, running off myself while she held it, etc. Not an exaggeration at all when I say that I probably did 250 reps a week on the board (broken into many, many small chunks) for about 2 months the winter our class decided we wanted to fix our contacts. We transferred it first to a very low a-frame, and eventually to full height contact equipment, eventually weaning out the mat.

I certainly think you are best off hearing what your instructor has to say when you start the contacts class. Obviously I haven't seen you and Cricket run, and I have a whopping one agility dog under my belt. I just *love* all the speed you can see on Cricket in that first picture, and my one rule for both my dogs (and with Gusto it is going to be hard!) is "Never slow them down!". I don't want my dogs to run slow, so I don't train them slow.

Oh Cricket. She is so awesome and has grown up into such a COOL looking dog. Looks like she is having a blast with agility!

To add to BB. You don't want to practice a behavior that you don't want. I learnt this the hard way. So if you want to compete and it looks like she is fast and loves it (so would be an amazing partner) you don't want to practice obstacles incorrectly.. ie don't practice frames or other contacts till you have a contact behaviour down pat. Not doing it on leash as it will be slow etc.

Hopefully you will get that in your contact class. Just wouldn't want to see you get 'stuck' from not getting any foundation work.

This class was through my work and I think my boss focuses more on doing it just for fun more than actually competing. I'm going to talk to her about how she runs the contacts and weaves class since o'd prefer to teach it right so we don't have to go back and retrain anything. If she doesn't plan on teaching the contacts from the ground there's an Agility club not too far that I'm going to contact since they have a really good reputation from what I hear. The agility classes through my work are free for me so if I go through the local agility club and have to pay for the classes I'm going to have to work on my husband sijce he isn't as understanding about my dog stuff as id like him to be. I think the agility club's classes are reasonably priced though and they are really focused on training for competition.

Cricket is super fast and as much fun as she is having I really think she deserves the chance to learn it the right way and ultimately compete. It would be stupid of me not to give her that opportunity lol.

Just noticed these photos. Cricket looks like so much fun.