Extra Agility, a Rio Special

Rio got some special Ri-only agility today. We had hired the arena for some extra training with the competition dogs this morning, but Dylan is still ill. He had lost some weight this month anyway (Dylan always does this at the start of the summer season when we go back to competing every weekend) but he’s dropped a lot over the weekend, and so as soon as we get his stomach settled we need to start fattening his skinny self back up to a more reasonable weight. Rio also got weighed and she’s a bit less than I’d like her to be at this stage (16.65kg), so she gets fattening too. They’ll both be thrilled!

Anyways, Rio was really super at agility, I was so happy with her! We had three jumps set up with a tunnel at either end, and she was sending down three jumps from the tunnel, and doing wing wraps to tunnels beautifully. She was tugging and fetching her toy to tug with, and generally being focused and fantastic.

Having said all that, I’m toying with the idea of giving her a month or so off from agility class. She is doing so well, but she’s still mentally very much a puppy and she does find it hard to focus for extended periods of time. We need to work on that, but away from agility.

Ri also learns very quickly, so she’s really up to speed on everything I wanted to have trained by now. The only thing I can think of is to start sequencing, and I think she’d be successful at it, but I don’t think it’s something she needs to learn right now. Everything else is not age appropriate yet.

My rough plan is to give her a break from agility class and start clicker training her 2o2o at home, slowly. I’m not 100% committed to this plan yet, but she also has flyball training going on so I think this is maybe the best decision.