#agility
I entered Open to get a sort of warm up round going, thinking it would calm me (which it did) and let her get any sillies out. Well it ended up being our cleanest run despite the DQ (we didn’t achieve the distance challenge).
This was the second of two mock trial runs (forgot to film the first one) where Marceline was great! I also practiced my ring routine and that also went really well. I feel a lot more confident about tomorrow.
This is my little set-up for when I’m not at the table as scribe. Hopefully tomorrow goes as smoothly as tonight did!
Had a pretty abysmal session this morning. She was not very engaged except for these brief moments in the video. I have this feeling like I’m holding her back and if I could just be better I’d be able to tap into her drive for agility more often. We have our first trial of the year this Friday and I am not feeling very confident about it.
I’m honestly pleased with how her weaves are coming along given I was so frustrated by them at the end of last year. She needs a little extra encouragement for all 12, but I think they’re coming along mostly well.
She was also very confident with the A frame at this half-height. Hoping to raise it slowly to get her confidence raising along with it.
I’m trying to work out why she’s sometimes stop-start-y. Do I need to reward more within a sequence? Is there something I am cuing that is offputting? She’s definitely responding to my higher quality food rewards and she was into the tug when I used it on the last run. Wondering where I can improve to make her experience better.
Had the bizarre experience today of having an audience for my training of a man and his son with their dogs. I did not really want them so close, but I decided to just treat it as a distraction exercise. Marceline was great other than jump 3, but that’s fair enough given it was so close to the strange dogs.
The dog husbandry on display by both the man and the boy was pretty abysmal so I opted to go for the “shut up and show off” method and made sure to reward Marceline regularly and obviously. I’m hoping something sinks in subconsciously…
At the end you can see that they let their dogs off leash and they immediately ran over. I had no idea if they were going to be friendly and/or safe so I recalled Marceline and scooped her up and she was then happy to hang out in my arms while I packed up.
Anyway, I’m really pleased with how her weaves are coming along. Not so strong on the entries, but committed once she finds the entry.
