Griffin Update

In the last month we’ve done 6 days of agility trials and one day of rally obedience – it ended up 4 days of trialing, each in a different program, in 8 days!

Most of the agility days have been good – we had one bad trial day where he did not participate and left the ring. Afterwards I emailed our instructor and asked if I should pull him from all the upcoming trials. Her recommendation was to keep going and since then, we’ve had 3 great trial days.

We did our first AKC agility trial. I’ve ‘always’ heard that it’s more formal than some of the other programs but I found that to be not true for us. The only tricky part was the measuring in the morning. He measured a little taller than he sometimes does and he’s right at the cut off line. He may end up having to jump 24″. During standard he did try to run off after the first jump – a quick circle of the ring, took the jump again and then did the rest of the course beautifully!  Later in jumpers he was right on task and was quite fast.

Last weekend we did CPE  which included his fastest run ever – 5.8 yards per second!

At our WCRL rally event last weekend I did some judging and hosting responsibilities. And we did 9 runs, all qualifying and three with perfect scores. Most of our errors were handler errors or bumping me on fronts.

Training moving forward:

• Start line stay: This has steadily declined over time. On one hand, he does run best just running with me and Silvia Trkman says start line stays may not be as necessary as everyone thinks (and if she says it, it must be true). But also, the types of courses we are doing right now are primarily longer straight lines and there’s no way I can keep up with him.
• Contacts: He’s held all of his contacts during the last 4 days of trials, but I haven’t been confident and he has missed some in lessons.
• Weave poles: Tricky angles – great. Straight line approach with extension? Needs work.

Upcoming events:

• Maybe AKC in a few weeks – we entered and I then wanted to remove my entry but forgot to. This is a bigger trial with multiple rings side by side…
• A few more days of CPE
• We need to enter more obedience. Pre-novice, beginner novice, and pre-open!