Playing at Agility

All summer, I've tried to set up some agility equipment for the dogs at least once a week. I know that doesn't seem like much but Mimi is too old to trial and Azza is, well, Azza is what she is. We just play at agility. But it's fun to test ourselves.

My work in the house with the cone and a jump bar during the winter really paid off. Azza has been embracing jumping, although she will only tackle jumps set to 8"; any taller and she will go around the jump. That's okay because I'd rather test her ability to learn and read my handling. She's been doing up to four jumps in sequence, she can read front crosses, serpentines, wraps, and sends to backsides, she will recall over a series of jumps, she loves loves loves the tunnel and my little table, and while she's not flying through the 2x2 weaves, she will eagerly trot through four poles that are nearly in line. She's in fact ready to have the third 2x2 added in. She seems much less worried about touching the metal base. However, she will never have lightening-fast weaves since that requires her to touch the poles, something she is careful not to do. She seems willing to play this strange game and have a bit of fun while she's at it.

A couple of weeks ago I introduced Azza to the joy of the bunny fur tug-n-treat. I play agility with Mimi with the bunny fur tug and Azza's been observing this for weeks. Using the clicker at first, then graduating to using the fur pouch itself and its delicious treats inside, Azza has learned to chase the thrown toy then return it to me for a treat, both rewarding behaviors for her. Sometimes I run with her to the toy so she gets the treat in place--as a result, she's decided the fur pouch is a rather interesting object.

I have also started working with Mimi on flipping away from me. I'm relying more on body motion signals than verbals, in particular the hand motions I use to have her spin in place in front of me. I used a flip away quite a bit with Iz but I never taught that to Mimi. She's picking it up very quickly.

My yard is small and my equipment is limited. I decide in advance what skill I'd like to work on then either find a bit of a published course or exercise that will do or I create my own. Most of the summer we've been working on going to backsides of jumps and weave entries. Even though there is a large skill gap between Mimi and Azza, if I put some thought and effort in it, I can come up with one setup that will work for both.

I generally work both dogs quite hard. Each dog gets three five-minute sessions and I alternate them so they get a chance to rest in between.

Here's the course's we've worked on in the past three weeks. I called the two shown below "Less is More." Yep, that's right, for one week, I worked the dogs for half an hour on only two jumps! Lots of practice with backsides and wraps. In the course on the left, you can barely see the two 2x2 weaves I put at the bottom of the course for Azza. Mimi did the six poles at the top of the course. That week we focused on weave entries.

I took the course section shown below out of a Clean Run article analysing the 2015 AKC International Team Tryouts Jumpers course. I only set up the part in the orange box and I added my little table at the position of the orange star. We had great fun with this. Some tough challenges if you decide to have the dog take the backside of every jump. I plan to set up the part at the top next week to work on funky tunnel entrances and exits.

You might be thinking, what's the point if we aren't competing? I would answer that agility challenges the dogs and keeps their little neurons whirring. It's good exercise for all of us. We get to run around the yard in the cool mornings. Treats and lots of praise and excitement are included, which we all like. And it's fun!