More Agility in KSA

I managed to sneak in some agility in April. Even though the Community Education-sanctioned agility classes ended in March, I ran a handful of informal agility classes in the back yard of one of the handlers.

Our informal agility was scaled back too. SS has a nice yard, which none of the single female handlers have, including me. While large by Aramco standards, we only had room for a couple of jumps and a tunnel.

Nellie driving out. Yes, that is indeed a bunny fur tug in PM's hand! Quite a few of the handlers bought one after I showed them what a great training tool it was.

SS and Abby showing off a very nice start to a serpentine. The tunnel, which I used as the third object in the serpentine, is just out of the photo to the right. All of my intermediate handlers can execute serpentine handling.

Boodle reluctantly going through the 2x2s. He likes to bluster at Nellie so he's on lead for this exercise.

Since we don’t have yards or a safe outdoor place to practice or access to an appropriately floored indoor space or extra equipment, most of the handlers don’t get any opportunity to work with their dogs outside of class. The extra classes were a great opportunity for them to return to fundamentals, working front crosses and rear crosses with a single jump, working on sends to the jumps (I’ve got some handler-focused dogs that often will not cross the plane of the jump unless the handler does too). To help with those sends and to ease the handlers off of babysitting the jumps, I introduced them to the out command. I’ve been getting them to think about their bodies more: which hand they use to signal an obstacle, which hand the dog receives the reward from, where their feet are pointing.

It quickly became too hot even though we started at 6:30 in the morning so agility in KSA is over for the summer. I can't wait for September!

Nellie showing mastery of this level of the 2x2 weave training.

I had some real weave pole bases made: two sets of six poles, each with a hinge in the middle so they will fit in my car. Mimi was thrilled to do real weaves again!