Tonight I was supposed to have Mom, Dad, Adam and maybe Eric going to class with me…but I ended up going alone instead. Midas was being kind of a brat when we first got there. He wasn’t focusing on what I was asking him to do at all so I took him into the middle of the room and made him quietly watch everyone else and when we started again he was much more focused.

We had a full teeter-totter this week, all the way to the ground and he had no problems with it at all. The instructor tried to soften the bang to the floor, until she realized that he didn’t care and then we just let it hit.

I worked on sending him to different obstacles from a distance but the only one that he does consistently is the tunnel (and only from a left-entrance) and the table. Everything else I have to guide him or be close.

There were four jumps set up near each other and I was supposed to guide him over the first two every time and then the third one would differ depending on command. I really don’t think he noticed the difference in commands and that he just jumped the one that I was pointing to.

The chute was set up in a shorter version this week and he did fine with that. The dog walk was no problem. The A-Frame was 4 feet tall and he didn’t have any difficulty what-so-ever with that either.

At the end of the class, in the last 1/2 hour we played a game called Snooker. Everyone else had to be off-course and one at a time every one else got to try their best for the game. There was a tire jump, two regular jumps and a tunnel to work with. We had to enter the “course” by jumping the first jump and exit the “course” by jumping the second jump - pointing out. The rest was up to us. Each obstacle was worth 1 point and we had 30 seconds to try to do as many as we could.

Midas did great! He didn’t hesitate and I only treated him once I think for the whole time. We had to race to get to the last jump in time but he was rushing right alongside of me so we made it - we got 9 obstacles. We got beat by two other dogs. One was disqualified because she knocked over a jump and then they kept using it - although she did get 13. The other dog only beat us by one so that was pretty cool. Overall, a fantastically fun class!!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 8:37 pm and is filed under Training Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.