Tonight was our third agility class and it was so much fun! We had everything set up again and we each got to move to a “set” of equipment to try out and then move onto the next thing. Midas was on a roll tonight! He was on the commands well, he was fast and he was focused. Several times another dog ran up to him and he completely ignored him. One time, we were coming through a series of 4 obstacles, he was on a run for the 5th and another dog came and stole his treat off of it! I made a huge leap and snagged his collar, but he wasn’t even getting upset, he was looking to me like, “Mom, where’s my treat?!”. Our instructor commented that she was impressed with my fast reflexes and that she had thought that a train wreck was coming.

Since Midas was doing so well she had me try a couple of more complicated things - and he passed with flying colors! Our only little glitch, was when I tried to run him from his left, he would sometimes try to switch sides so that I was in the “proper” position, but we kept working on that until he had it down so I was happy . He was one of the few dogs that has absolutely no issues with the teeter-totter:

The weaves are still rahter rough, so we worked on that:

We had another “course” to try at the end of the class. It started off with two jumps:

Then a tunnel:

(Eric had to stand kind of right in the way for this one, and Midas never even looked at him, he was totally focused on me and the next object *so proud I could burst* )

Then we had a “Big Jump”:

The table was next, he can’t go flying off the back-side and he has to lay down, with elbows touching for five seconds.

I moved around behind him to get to the next obstacle for his release, and he spun to look at me, lifting his elbows and so we had to start counting again.

Next was the dogwalk:

We worked really hard on the “wait” command tonight so that his contacts were on - tonight is the first night that he consistently did it

Then we had a circle of jumps, including a tire jump, that we had to do 1.5 times:

Then was the collapsed, chute tunnel, which he mastered with no problems tonight, then we race down to the A-Frame, up and over and the “wait” command again. Then through the weaves. The weaves are the only area that Midas is behind the other dogs, I still have to lead him through every time. He always wants to take shortcuts, the little brat.

Then we’re done!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 9:07 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.