June Update
I just wanted to mention what an absolute star Kim was last weekend at the Yorkshire Bouncers show. We had four classes and I was hoping for a couple of top-10 placings to bump us up the League Tables, but Kim just really enjoyed the courses and ended up with a 7th, 2×3rd and a 2nd. One of her 3rds was in Intro Agility, where she was 0.6 seconds off the winners time (the top 4 dogs were all 28.–, whereas everyone else had a 31.21+ time); frustratingly for me, I misjudged her dogwalk contact command and she stopped before walking on to it, losing around a second on her time — I know this is our weak point, and I’m going to have to work on timing. We have 6 classes this weekend, plus Lucky Dip Pairs, so I’ll have to see what we can do.
I also took Mollie to agility training on Monday, what an embarrassment that was! When she works, she’s amazing, completely fearless and very fast, but her attention span is like a gnat. Unless I can get her completely focussed on me, she just bombs off to look for a ball. (It didn’t really help that Bryn was there, since Bryn is the one dog that really does send her loopy). I only worked her for about 30mins and then she did a perfect 12-weaves for me, so I left it at that. I wish I had my own equipment to train on, and the patience to stick at it with her, since I know she’s got the potential to be good enough to do really well. On the other hand, she ran like a lunatic at flyball last night against MurphyWhippet, matching him stride for stride to the box where he gets her every time. And we all know she’s a flyball dog at heart!
There have been some interesting discussions on http://ruffdogs.co.uk/ and on the Agility Forum about contact training, and training different methods for different obstacles. I know there are some agility people reading this blog, so feel free to share your thoughts – I’d love to know why you chose to use 2o2o/4off/running/4on/whatever, whether you’d do the same again, and if it works! (If you don’t want to post a comment, feel free to email me at kayanem@gmail.com)