Agility in KSA! Week 5

The eid holiday was this past week and a lot of people are still out on leave so only four handlers showed up in class this morning besides me and CJ. I knew this was going to be the case so I decided to put out three challenges and give a prize to the handler who managed each one the best. An agility friend (A in Portland) donated a bag full of small plush toys for this very purpose--generous and thoughtful and definitely put to good use! The handlers loved the idea of winning prizes!

CJ and Webster working the third challenge: serpentine handling in a ring of jumps.

 The challenges were five jumps in a straight line, two straight tunnels side by side, and a ring made of six jumps.

For the first challenge, it was my plan to have the handlers send their dogs away from them over the jumps to see how far their dogs would go. The handler was not supposed to cross the plane of the first jump. However, two of the dogs had no reliable send so instead we had their handlers call them over the jumps. The rest of the handlers got to use a plastic lid baited with food as a target. I had everyone backchain the sequence, doing two jumps, then three, then four, then finally five.

HD's desert dog (mostly Canaan dog in origin) Savvy has never been off leash in class. HD is worried about her running off or even attacking another dog. But with such a small class, it was easy to get everyone to stuff their dog in their crate when it was Savvy's turn so she had as calm a working space as possible. Savvy has never been sent over a jump so it was clear that HD was going to have to do a recall with her.

To our amazement, Savvy nailed this exercise. She sailed over the jumps and ran right to HD who had the biggest grin on her face. I was holding Savvy by the collar (another huge step forward for this dog who was so mistrustful of everyone when she started) and she was pulling pretty hard to get going over those jumps. I was so proud to see this lovely dog completely absorbed in doing some agility with her handler. Savvy has come a long way since she started back in January.

Look at Savvy go! HD at the end of the jumps calling her dog.

MW's Boodle has always been a reluctant jumper and he does not like to be sent over jumps. He is 12 years old so this isn't a problem that I have spent a lot of energy trying to fix. So I let her do a recall with him too. It must have been the cooler weather because he did a wonderful job too!

JW sending Jack over all of the jumps after a complete set of backchaining. CJ is guarding the target, ready to cover the food with her foot if the dog goes around any of the jumps.

HD and Savvy won the first challenge because of the tremendous leap forward both of them made but I let MW take a toy for Boodle too because he showed so much more commitment and enthusiasm than usual.

For the second challenge, it was my plan to have the handlers send their dog into one tunnel then turn them into the second tunnel without going between the two tunnels. I demonstrated it with Mimi and I could tell all of them were thinking, yeah, sure, they make it look easy--my dog will never do that. Even though I expected that all of the handlers would have to move forward between the tunnels at least a little bit, I knew that with a bit of coaching they would all be successful. And that proved to be true.

MW and Boodle working the tunnels.

Savvy again surprised us. She doesn't like tunnels (finds them pretty scary) and will only go into straight, shortened tunnels. I wasn't even sure she'd do this particular challenge at all. But I let HD and her daughter have a go, again with Savvy off the leash, and Savvy managed to slowly make her way through the tunnels three times in a row! That's more tunnels than she's ever done before.

The real star of this exercise was LF with her golden Amira. Amira has become quite the tunnel sucker and after a bit of coaching and practice, LF was able to handle the challenge as I intended. It was pretty awesome to see a novice handler pulling off nice distance handling.

In one tunnel...

...and out the other! LF and Amira.

There are quite a few handling options for a ring made from six jumps but I chose to set the third challenge as a serpentine: over the first jump away from the handler, back towards the handler for the second jump, etc. This would give me an opportunity to introduce RFP (or false turn) handling to the new handlers. Doing serpentine handling in a circle instead of a line of three jumps is considerably harder, but I don't like to make things too easy. It makes for lazy handlers.

Me and Mimi demonstrating serpentine handling.

Back Mimi goes over another jump.

Another handler and dog rose to the top for this challenge: JW and her mix Jack. She is so serious (I have to constantly remind her not to tell Jack "no" when she, JW, makes a handling error, and to praise him at the end of a sequence with love and treats) but she tried really hard and absolutely nailed the serpentine after a bit of practice with the RFP handling.

HD using perfect serpentine handling--look at Savvy's focus and lovely turn over the jump.

JW and Jack nailed this exercise quite nicely.

Another week of agility in KSA and great fun was had by all!