Agility Training

Griffin's favorite things at PosiDog were (in approximate order) the water, the back door, and the people. Those things were huge distractions for training. Back door was fixed easily (and in 2 sessions!) with Premack. He does behaviors, we run to the door and go outside. Horray! Water...I just keep picked up or let him drink. And people...he's allowed to love them and generally leaves them alone fairly quickly.

On Tuesday night after agility class we did a training session with the equipment set up. He was great! He went to the back door 0 times. The water bowl 7 times (...only one time for each bowl...) and little/no interest in people coming in and out of the room. He was staying when asked, he had an auto down on the table (...who trained that?) about 85% of the time. He was fast and working ahead of me and really running.

He knocked one bar when he wrapped a jump tightly and hit the standard. He had never done that before and I don't expect it to become an issue. I wasn't able to get ahead of him for front crosses. That should improve with Karin teaching me to be faster, us working on our stays/lead outs for greater than the 30'ish we have, and me being a little less frenzied.

Blaze is/was fast and probably more 'intense' than Griffin, but I think Griffin has a larger stride and is (or will) ultimately be faster. Plus, I'm not much more worried about giving cues in a timely manner for creating the best lines possible.

We're still lacking in the contact behavior and weave pole areas... I'm almost tempted to go wtih our fake 2o2o so we can be trialing sooner... but I should probably just work more with equipment and do more running contact training.

Tomorrow Karin and I are doing a private lesson with an instructor...we haven't done this since December. Griffin was a bit...distracted... that day. Theoretically he'll do better this time.