Thursday 12 June 2014

An inadvertent private agility lesson

I go to an early evening class, which means I have to slope off from work slightly early to get there on time. Not a huge deal, as I work from home and so make up the hours in the morning or later the evening. Daisy and I went training yesterday, and I took Cybi along too, just to see how he'd get on with the idea of agility.  Anyway, everyone else in the class got held up by work, couldn't make it or had an injured dog, so I got to have a 1-1 session, which was both good and bad. Good because we really did get to focus and work hard. Bad in that by 20 minutes in, I was knackered, Daisy was knackered and we'd made about the same amount of progress as we usually do in an hour which then left the problem of what to do with the remaining 40 minutes so she didn't switch off or get bored, and I didn't tire her out or overstress her physically or mentally. She's still only 10 months old, after all.
I was pleased with her - she did really well (once she'd remembered that tunnels have both an entrance and an exit - little brainfart there), and we were working on decreasing her reliance on looking at me for cues, and some directional stuff.
Sometimes, just sometimes, it feels like the flow is coming and we're beginning to work as a team. Then I'll use the wrong hand, or stand in the wrong place, or she'll see a jump she'd rather do than the one that's on the list to do next and it all goes a bit to pot, but for those odd occasions...there's no feeling like it.

Having got round 10 or so jumps in sequence a couple of times with Daisy rocketing along, barking her head off and generally having a lovely time, I gave Cybi a go. Not without a certain amount of apprehension, as he's only been with me for just over a week (even though it already feels much longer...in a good way) and I had no idea what he'd do. Answer: tie himself in knots trying to overthink what I might want him to do and try to do that. Bless. Once he'd figured out that all I wanted from him was to trot next to me going over two jumps (and by going over, I mean stepping over a pole on the ground between two wings) and to pay attention to me to identify which jump we were going to go over next, he made that look easy. He also nearly caused heart failure when he went for a bit of an explore round the training field and found the sheep on the far side of a gate with a dog-sized gap underneath. Fortunately, he came back when called...
Meanwhile, while I was doing a few jumps and some focus exercises with Cybi, Daisy was yelling her head off from the gate where I had attached her. She can be quite possessive of me, and gets cross when I give Cybi attention. I'm hoping to channel that into her work, but so far with only limited success - at the moment she appears to sulk when I've been doing something with Cybi and then it's her turn again, and she seems to switch off. I don't know if I'm reading that right - hopefully I'm not and it's just that the weather has been hot and she's been working hard for a limited time, then just doesn't have the mental stamina for round two, as I'm not sure how to fix a sulking puppy so she's happy again!

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