Tuesday I was practicing with Alicia, her last practice day before she goes back to her home ;-(, and Cricket could not do 2 jumps in a row. She was a trip, she just could not keep from watching me. There is no way she was even close to looking to find any obstacles and would just curl back. The plan was that no toys on my body, I would have to put all the toys out on the ground from now on, or have other people throw the rewards. Plus I needed to work a lot of straight lines.
Later that same day after a quick trip with the dogs to the beach I swung by Contact Point to use their yard. Same dog, same day.......now when we were working with just a few jumps she would take eight jumps in a row, being very clever to find obstacles all on her own without a glance back at me standing on the take off side of the first jump, lOL. It was too funny. So lots of work breaking it down rewarding for checking in and paying attention, a new plan was born.
Next day, Wednesday.....Cricket and I had her third ever agility class, I knew there would be an aframe so I emailed for a copy of the course in advance so I could plan what I wanted to do since Crickets aframe is not totally ready to just run in a full course. I looked at the map...
after Tuesdays morning practice I was thinking that the obstacles from #5-#11 would be another trainwreck....the serpentine to that nice arcing line where I knew I would end up way behind Cricket would be a killer for a dog that just curves into me. I was tired and figured we had enough practice on Tuesday...it was windy, so i really wanted to blow off the class. Being the agility addict I picked my butt up and went to class.
SUPRISE, SUPRISE,SUPRISE.....BABY DOG STRIKES AGAIN AND WE WENT FROM TRAIN WRECK TO DANCING IN ONE DAY! Hey I know it will surely all fall apart numberous more times but it is such a rush when all of a sudden things click....even if it is for a split second.
We had a bit of trouble in the box in the middle of the course, I was worried and hurried wondering how I was going to get where I needed and Cricket was frenzied and wild. I was proud of both of us because I stopped, took a breath, remembered an agility mantra I have always remembered, WORK EACH OBSTACLE UNTIL IT CAN NO LONGER BE FAULTED, I quit worrying about how I was going to handle three steps forward and just worked each obstacle and IT WAS FANTASTIC! When I took a breath and settled myself down and concentrated on just doing my job, Cricket turned into a confident looking, quiet thinking dog just doin' her job. She was GORGEOUS!
I was so proud of my girl. I got a little video, on the first part I just isolated the aframes, and I noticed when I edited the video that my stride regulator was zinging all over the place, poor Cricket. After the aframes there is video of the aframes in sequence, and you can see her awesome dog walk end.
WEAVE CHALLENGE UPDATE
Miley and Diana posted their third week weave challenge video, they look really great. I love how happy Miley looks doing weaves ;-).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wD1tbepwDd0#at=33
I do think that Diana brings up a point with how she is doing her weaves that it is a super good idea to throw in 12 weaves ever so often so the dog is not patterned to think weaves just come in 6's with all the weave work we are doing.