Open house demos May 15, 2011

Our club held an open house on Sunday, with demos in agility, flyball, and disc. I ran my dogs in the agility demos (and also tried handling a club member's Border Collie in flyball...but I can't say that I did very well in that, haha!).

There were two different agility demos; a Standard run and a run called "Clockwatcher's" (in which two different dog/handler teams run sequences at the same time; whoever gets to the table first wins).

It was raining during Mika's Standard run, but she didn't care at all; she just wanted to do agility and get treats! I have to work on her startline stay; she released herself a couple of times and I had to reset her (after rewarding her for her enthusiasm, of course). There were other spectator dogs watching just 5-10 feet away from her, by the fence, but she only glanced at them a few times and remained totally focused on me! Watching her in the video, I see no signs of immense stress (the lip-licking was because of the treats I was giving her). When we finally started our run, she was wonderful!! Below is the first half of our run:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqZK4x8A1nc



The second half of our run is in a different video clip, which I haven't bothered to upload yet, but it included a really nice A-frame (even though the AF was wet).

Then Wall-e had his turn. He was, well...kind of nuts, doing things he doesn't usually do! Running past jumps, entering the weaves super-late, running behind me to go on the contacts and table...but this was his first time training on the field this year (thanks for noting that, Ashley), so it's no wonder he was acting really green. He did have a lot of fun, though!

I didn't run Mika in Clockwatcher's, but I did run Wall-e, with Helen and her great sheltie Beckett. More running past jumps! Looks like Wall-e will be going back to square one with sequencing for a while :) No matter, I enjoy these training challenges, they're what makes agility interesting. And after all, Wall-e is just telling me that I need to improve my training skills in this area. The video is below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nkmbjxeNZU



We did the Standard demo again in the afternoon. I didn't run Mika again because there were two big black dogs RIGHT next to the fence, actually right where Mika would be running towards to enter the second last tunnel; I definitely didn't want to put her in that situation. Wall-e ran again, though. His second Standard run wasn't much different than the first, but again, he did have a smile on his face the whole time, so I wasn't unhappy! But he had a BEAUTIFUL A-frame that I just had to reward. When he soared over the top, I expected him to miss his 2on2off, but nope, he stopped right when he was supposed to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c07x6zjbNjE



So it was a fun day and I now know that I have a lot to work on in terms of refreshing Wall-e's knowledge of sequencing! :)