Wall-e's first sequencing class

On Monday, Wall-e and I had our first Starters sequencing class.

The first exercise that we did involved a lateral lead-out with a curved tunnel. The dog was left in a stay in front of the left tunnel entrance, while the handler led-out in front of the right entrance and released the dog to the left entrance. (Am I confusing anyone yet!) Wall-e ran to me the first couple of times, but when I stood in the middle of the tunnel, he got it.

Then there was an S-shaped sequence involved the teeter, jumps, the A-frame, and 12 poles. Wall-e did a tunnel instead of the AF because his AF is still under construction. His weaves were funny in class for some reason. The first time we tried this sequence, he went through the first and second poles, but hadn't collected himself enough to make the turn to the third pole. The second time we tried it, he entered at the second pole. I was kicking myself afterward because I called him out of the poles a couple times to send him through again, instead of letting him finish the sequence like I do at the field. Next time I'm really going to try to act like I do at the field, though.

The last thing we did was run a whole course that included the exercises that we'd run. Wall-e did everything beautifully, except for the dog walk, strangely! There was a tunnel wrapped around the entrance ramp, which he'd never seen before. When I cued him to go up the DW, he started to go up, then jumped off the up-plank when he saw the tunnel underneath him. The instructor said to lure him up with my hand, which I did. Once he realized that it was still a DW and wasn't some weird tunnel-DW hybrid, he was fine. He didn't have his usual speed, but he was good and stopped for his 2o2o. Next week I'll try to get to class a bit earlier to practice the DW and get his normal speed.

The rest of the sequence went great. He even got his weave entry the first time, although he was slow and uncertain. (I shouldn't have called him out before....) He stayed in the poles when I did a front cross at the end and finished with a nice send to a tunnel.