Agility Class #3
Tonight was Midas’s third agility class and Eric came with. We had an interesting time tonight. This guy and his little terrier tripped me and his dog growled and attacked Midas while we were running and trying to do jumps. His response? “Oops” and then to walk away. WOW.
He continued to crowd us and our space for the rest of the evening, totally oblivious. Needless to say that Midas was riled up after this (and another incident involving the poodle in the class careening into him) and we had to take a time-out in the corner so that he could refocus.
On this one, I tell him to “walk it” and then after he gets off the board he has to “wait” and then he gets his release word and gets a treat from the target (which is just out of sight of this photo).
We practiced with four jumps in a row tonight. We started off on-leash and worked up to off-lead. He did fine. His only problem is twisting to make sure he’s supposed to go over the next one. I think he would have eventually caught on but we only got to practice this one once.
This is the other jump that we practice, the tire jump. Some dogs try to go under it but Midas has no problem going through 
He had a hard time with sliding off the table last week. But, this week there was some carpet on there to help out. His lay down upon hitting the table was, for the most part, much quicker than last week.
The A-Frame was new this week. It’s about 1/2 the size of the A-Frame he’ll have to climb in real competitions. Some dogs were scared to go up it. But, from lots of practice of us posing him and coaxing him into odd positions and onto odd things, Midas took this totally in-stride. His footwork isn’t very smooth yet, but we only did this twice, so I think it will get there.
We practiced the weave-poles again this week with a little twist. We were supposed to do some homework during the last week: teach our dogs to go around an object on their right shoulder with the command “Go Right Around”. I practiced with Midas almost every day . So, this week instead of just sending them through the weaves, they had to go through and turn Right Around and come back around the last pole. He did GREAT at it!
We had two tunnels this week. A straight one and one in a U-shape. The U-shaped tunnel was also a dark purple. Midas did it fine the first couple of times and then seemed to forget when we tried to tie the two together. So, we’ll have to really work on this next week. Here is the straight tunnel:
After class I had an extensive conversation with the instructor about our upcoming dock jumping event and how to handle Midas’s behavior. We also signed up for another month of agility classes! 
