Gracie, My Agility Queen (2)

Gracie is still holding tight to the 'Gility Queen title. She got to run again with Mimi's class this morning. That class is a full two levels above Gracie's usual class. But I'm so proud to say that the only thing Gracie really struggled with was a rear cross on a super tight sliced jump.

Well, she didn't actually do all 12 weave poles either. Gracie can do 6 poles in either direction on the first attempt (she is still weaving for her dinner) but I've not yet dragged the other set of 6 poles into my training room. I'll probably do that this weekend. But that's an easy problem to fix and I have no doubt she will be flying through 12 poles in a matter of days. (For you non-agility folks, my reference to "either direction" for the weaves is the result of a slight difference in the weave entry depending on which side the handler is on; the weaves are performed the same every time so the difference is one of perspective, not of performance. The dog must step left between poles 1 and 2. If I am on the dog's left, the dog has to put the first pole between me and her and often has to step away from me to do this. This is sometimes called offside weaves. There is a difference in performance of the weave pole exit depending on which side the handler is on but we'll leave that for another day. Some dogs can do one direction better than the other but this is a fault of training. It is best to train both directions equally. That way the dog learns weave performance independent of handler position. But enough of these technical details.)

Everybody in class complimented me on Gracie's obvious joy as well as how nice her runs were. I was throwing serpentine handling, threadles, 270s, front and rear crosses, even a couple of lead outs at my green girlie and she stayed right there with me for every sequence.

Even with all the fancy handling, Gracie's commitment point for obstacles is still pretty close to said obstacle. This means I can't run Gracie like I run Mimi. I nailed a fabulous rear cross on the weaves with Meems but didn't even try that with Gracie, opting to rear cross the next obstacle, the chute, instead. And Gracie's contacts need work. She really, really wants to do running contacts as part of her natural stride and I'm not sure I want her to even know such things exist. It is quite a luxury to catch up to Meems as she calmly wait on her contacts.

Mimi had some very lovely sequences and we had a clean run in the Standard course that we ran today. (We rarely run full courses in class.) She was even more focused than usual after watching me run Gracie on each exercise, so even though Operation Jealousy has been toned way down, it is still working its mojo on Mimi's brain.

Gracie is a magnificent agility partner and I can't wait to see how she progresses in the next few months.