It's A Wrap!

Archie and Azza enjoying a sunny morning after weeks of cool, cloudy days.

I was excited and nervous when I took Archie to class on Tuesday morning. New day and time, and an entirely new class: Archie's beautiful stopped contacts and his weaves (still a work in progress) earned him a promotion to the next level of training. 

I was nervous because Archie and I are the "new team"--all of the other handlers and dogs in this class have been taking classes together and already know each other. But it turns out that the instructor placed us in a perfect class because all of the dogs in it are at almost the same level of performance as Archie. 

In our new class, we work sequences of 5 to 10 obstacles arranged to focus on a specific skill. This is always a bit of a leap for dogs learning agility because the rewards are spaced farther apart. In contrast, when rewarding at a skills station like those we worked on in his previous class, Archie would get rewards every few seconds. Consistent with his overall chill attitude, Archie seemed to accept this new arrangement without any hesitation.

However, he did have a "puppy brain" moment on his first run of the morning. He had completed the sequence and I had tossed the bunny fur tug out in front of the last couple of jumps. He grabbed it...and took off running! He jumped over a tunnel, carried his precious up and over the Aframe a couple of time, did a few jumps just because he could then carried it into another tunnel where he settled down in the MIDDLE OF THE TUNNEL with plans to rip the tug open and get to the treats. Oh, such a naughty puppy! I managed to convince him to bring it to me before he emptied the treats into the tunnel.

On his next turn, I took no chances and ran with a traditional bait bag clipped to the waist of my shorts. 

The first class did expose an interesting hole in his training: Archie has no wrap command. A dog that knows he will wrap a jump will collect himself as he approaches the jump, take off closer to the jump and land closer to the jump. Agile dogs that get the idea of the wrap can turn as they jump, so that when they land, they are already pointed in another direction. That's been the theme of our training at home this week. 

Archie picked up the concept rather quickly (including turning as he jumps) so tomorrow I'll set up some obstacles (as few as three jumps is enough but I'll probably toss in a tunnel and of course weaves) that I can use to work both the wrap and an extended jump.