Griffin’s Best Agility Lesson

Griffin had his best lesson ever last Monday!  I wasn’t sure if it was going to happen due to a

Tired dog.

and watching a live stream of our instructor competing out of state the day before…   but we had an 8AM agility session.

I wasn’t prepared – I didn’t have days to think about it, I didn’t have my treats ready, and we didn’t do our usual longer warm up. When  I walked the sequence Griffin stepped on my (slip on) shoes and I realized I didn’t even have my athletic shoes.  I had to run in my socks – something I never do!

The whole lesson went very well. We came away with things to work on, some surprising, some not.

• Walk the course with care. I took an obstacle the wrong way. This is an ongoing problem for me.
• Some wide turns (not bad – just not perfect!)
• Back sides of wingless jumps
• Verbal cue for back side of jump (ongoing problem. I need a verbal cue. I can’t come up with something distinct).
• Early cueing – I’m doing better. I’m an ongoing too-early-of-cue’er…  in my effort to not be late.

Great parts:

• Stopping on all contacts, first try.
• Weave poles all great
• We could actually get the back side of the jump. It wasn’t as impossible as it seemed a year ago.
• Great focus – he did go off at the end for an off course and then into nothing – much improved from getting that at the beginning of the lesson!
• Sequencing was easy.
• Most (all?) variations of the sequences were easy.

So – why were things so much better?  Was it because I wasn’t thinking about the lesson for days in advance? Because all of our training and health pieces are coming together? Being allowed to swim has magically made him better?

Next steps:  We’re looking at what trials to enter. It’s been 14+ months since we last tried – even though most of that has been crate rest, hopefully now that he’s feeling better and has had more training we should have a better experience. We’ll be doing our homework and I can’t wait to see what we have next time.

My goal at lessons is always to get a list of things to be working on and to get someone else to help evaluate our strengths/weaknesses.  This week was a success – building on our past weaknesses, new pieces to work on, and great participation from my dog.