Welcome To Agility, Demo!

Thursday night was our first night in our new flyball class. One of our former classmates moved into this class with us which was a nice surprise... and we managed to more than double the previous size of the class.

Demo gets to hang out while Pan and Trophy run, and overall he was really good. He did scream a little when i was running Trophy, but otherwise he was quiet and it helped him chill out before his beginner class, which has 6 other dogs in it, but more on that in a moment.

The course laid out for the first class had a really neat jump pattern, i'll try to diagram that when i get home (currently updating from my phone at a flyball tournament in beautiful and cold Davisburg, Michigan). After the weaves we had to front cross into a jump, send to a jump then pull the dog over another jump, front cross into a pinwheel and front cross again after the 3rd jump back into the weaves (it will make more sense when you see it), it was a lot of front crosses very quickly, but it flowed very nicely.

Dog on right out of weaves.  Front cross before 2, Push dog over 3, Pull dog over 4 with a front cross on the landing side.  Dog on right for 5 and 6, Push out back over 7 front cross on the landing side of 7 dog on left back into weaves.

The best part of the night for me was actually in warmup when Trophy let me front and rear cross while he was weaving 12 poles!! I'm so proud of the work we have put into our weaves.

Then Demo had his beginner class right after. It is a big class, and Demo did so well. Luckily he's not the only dog with space issues, but it's a totally different class experience than i had with Trophy, the canine pacifist. I freaked myself out more than anything about the space issue, as was evident when i tried to fall asleep that night and woke up 3 times clutching my cat (who sleeps in my arms when it's cold) and freaking out that i was grabbing Demo seconds before he attacked a dog that ventured too close to his space.

In reality Demo only snarked at one dog. He was brilliant for everything else, but i'd already worked on turns on the flat and touch. He knows how to go thru jump uprights, he was a little freaked out by the noise of the hulahoop (mine has water not beads in it), and once he understood he'd get his tug for running thru the tunnel he flew through it.

Need to somehow find a 12inch wide board to work on walking down a plank into 2o2o. He couldnt keep his butt on the plank, so i also need to do some more hind end awareness tricks with him.

I'm really happy with him though, he's very focused.

Now we are at a flyball tournament. Pan needs 800 points to get her FM and we have racked up 450 so far (one more race today, 5 tomorrow). Trophy needs 500 more points to get his FM and he has 108 points so far (2 more races today, 4 tomorrow). Trophy's team had a really uncoordinated race for 28 total points, so i'm hoping we can pull it together. I'm going to be slightly mad if they dont both get their titles this weekend. :)

Edit: went back and added the paragraph breaks. Sorry! I forgot when i update from the blogger app-thingy on my phone enter does not equal a line break. Whoops! Havent had a chance to illustrate this post yet, sorry!

Edit2: finally added a crappy diagram of the agility course.