We’ve had some time off of agility. Griffin had a good trial day last month and a pretty good time last weekend. When he is participating, he is fun because he is adorable and well trained. He commits to obstacles well and just goes with the plan.
Standard was interesting because of the table obstacle. A lot of dogs had trouble with the table. A lot. Many. It was very surprising to me on how many dogs wouldn’t get up and/or wouldn’t go down once up there. Griffin – no problem. But why is that and why did so many dogs have trouble? This always stands out to me when I’m at USDAA trials – to the point that I tell my students we do so much practice because dogs tend to have trouble with it.
Is it that we do a lot of fast down practice for his obedience/rally training? That he has an auto down as part of his “go to bed” training? It is one of his strongest offered behaviors? I’m not sure.
Standard
Jumpers
Here we had a refusal fault when he went wide while looking around. But then he got back on track and was focused.
Gamblers
Gamblers is our specialty. We’re pretty good at strategic point accumulation and skilled with distance. We ended up with 40 points and 3rd place. We tied for second and the first place only had 42 points. I should have only taken the tunnel once and we would have had enough time to finish the second 5 point teeter. Very few dogs had trouble with the gamble.
It was great to have someone do video for us. We had one more run, only partially on video – Griffin did 4 jumps and then left the ring – and then happily came back in. Very strange.
Tonks got her first measurement. She’s apparently taller than Griffin! I’m looking forward to her first agility trial soon.