Agility in KSA Week 11

The new Community Education session started this week and today was the first of ten agility classes that we will run until the end of March. By then, it will be getting too hot for the dogs to be working outside, even at 6:30 in the morning, so unfortunately, that may be all the agility we will do until next September.

Five of the handlers who took the class in the fall signed up again plus I managed to round up three new ones. Tomorrow is an Aramco holiday so a lot of people went OOK for the long weekend but this morning for our first class, JH and Aris and CJ and Webster both showed up along with new handlers HD with a "desert dog" mix Savvy and K with JRT Obie.

MH is OOK too so I had to run this class by myself. It took me three trips with my dolly to get the equipment down the hill to the soccer field but with plenty of willing hands pitching in at the end of class, we hauled everything up in one trip!

I spent my Christmas weekend building a pause table. I've built one before and knew that I had a good design to work from. But acquiring the materials to build it represented three trips into town over a period of about a month to different local shops--no such thing as Home Depot around here. These local shops are dusty, dirty holes literally crammed floor to ceiling with whatever goods they specialize in. A Saudi in a thobe, usually the owner or the owner's relative, sits at a desk near the front and directs a crew of small brown men who climb and crawl over the piles of stuff to get the items that customers want. No browsing shelves, no comparing prices, no selecting items for yourself.

The wood that is available to me here is extremely poor quality. I was looking for 1x1 strips to use inside the table to strengthen the frame but couldn't find any. I ended up getting "1x2" strips that had been ripped from larger boards. Unfortunately, the laborer who did the ripping didn't bother to rip the original boards down the middle. The "1x2" strips were randomly sized in all directions. I wanted to make the sides of the table out of 1x8s, a common board size in the US, so that without its PVC base the table would be the minimum 8 inches tall. The best I could find were two curved, knotty pieces of wood that were approximately 1x6 inches. The top was supposed to be made out of plywood. All I could find was extremely expense marine-grade plywood, not the cheap composite stuff. And I had to buy an entire 4x8 foot piece of it, although they did cut it down to size for me, sort of.

So this table was cobbled together out of semi-random bits of wood, none of which were true to size or straight. And I did this without a workbench or even a garage. Stubbornness is a great asset in such situations.

Look at this corner! What a mess. Fortunately, the really ugly bits are on the underside.

I managed to get some acrylic primer at another store. For the final color, I chose to go with high gloss fire-engine red spray paint because it was easier to apply.

Now for the top of the table. Rather than go with a rubberizing kit, which I could have ordered online, or with paint mixed with sand, I decided to put green astroturf carpeting on top. I had my mother pick up some at her local home improvement store and in the best of all timings, the package arrived on Wednesday. I spent my Thursday afternoon cutting then glueing then screwing the carpet to the table--just in time to use for class this Friday morning! You can see the results in the photos below.

Even though I had two new handlers, I jumped right into some interesting exercises. I set up a jump box (four jumps arranged in a square) with a curved tunnel and pause table arranged outside. I had my experienced handlers work their dogs straight through the box, practicing good body language so the dogs didn't take the off-course jumps, then I introduced them to the reverse-flow pivot or false turn to help their dogs to the correct tunnel entrance. I had the new handlers work one, then two jumps, starting them sequencing in the very first class!

Savvy, the "desert dog" mix is Saluki as well as lab and pit bull. Pit bulls are banned in KSA but there is a big dog fighting affair up north of here and they smuggle pit bulls in for that purpose. Puppies mixed with pit show up all the time, discards that escaped being used for bait. Savvy is a very cautious dog but her owner is patient and follows instructions well so we had Savvy jumping 4" jumps and even getting onto the table after just a few attempts. It's not right to take credit since HD and Savvy are doing all the work, but I am really proud that I am able to help all kinds of dogs and handlers be successful.

Since all the dogs were extremely quick to pick up the table, I next had them work two jumps and the table, first in a straight line across the box then in a curve.

CJ and her little star Webster. We introduced him to 4" jumps this morning. Doesn't look like he has any problems with that!

What a pretty sit on the table!

JH and her little OLD star Aris. She emailed me and MH last week to say that she was concerned that Aris had been acting a bit old of late (he has a bum hip and arthritis and we leave the bars on the ground for him). But he had plenty of pep in class this morning for the full hour and a half!

One of the new handlers K and her JRT Obie. He's a bit too focused on her hands but he had no problem with the jumps!

Nice table landing!

Savvy and HD.

Savvy began class a nervous wreck--worried about the crate, about all of the strange dogs, about all of the strange people. But once we got HD and Savvy going, they started having a grand time! You can see Savvy looking ahead to the next jump and to the table after that.

Another extremely positive training session for all the dogs and handlers, and two excited new agility converts!