Frankie had a pretty good weekend at our last trial. She got her first FAST Q and earned her Novice Standard title. She also had five out of six very good start line stays. She's holding her position until I release her, and looking forward at the obstacle, not at me.
Her failed start line on the sixth attempt was entirely my fault.
AKC requires dogs to enter and exit the ring on lead. Archie wears a very loose martingale on a nylon leash. It is mostly decorative as he doesn't need it for restraint when we enter. Even when I slip the collar over his head and toss the leash to the leash runner, I know Archie will stick by my side until I put him in position, and he will stay there until I release him. He's a good boy that wants to please me.
Frankie wears a martingale attached to a braided fleece tugging leash on top of the buckle collar she wears all the time. She does need that leash for restraint. I guess I got overconfident. We entered the ring for her first run in Open Standard (I of course moved her up after she earned her Novice title). She was over-aroused, as usual, and I was a bit tired and distracted. The first obstacle was the tire, with a straight approach to the dogwalk, which she could see through the tire. I slipped the collar off her head and started to stuff the leash into my pocket. My mistake was not holding on to her when I did this. I thought she'd stay by me, like my good boy Archie. Nope.
She took off, slamming into the tire and heading up the dogwalk. Hitting the tire like that was a fatal error, equivalent to knocking a bar from a jump. So the run was already lost. AKC has a new feature called Fix-N-Go in which you can go back and fix an error. You still lose the Q, and you can't go back to the beginning if the error occurred in the middle of the course, and you can't attempt the fix anything more than once. But we hadn't even started the run, so my Fix-N-Go could start at the tire.
I called her back to me. She came right back! I made her sit and led out only a few feet away from her to the tire. I knew I couldn't get any more distance than that. She was so excited that she was nearly levitating out of her skin. I released her and off we went.
And she had a really great run! She didn't make the Aframe contact, and she missed a jump near the end of the course, but that didn't matter because we weren't running for the Q anyway. Her performance was better than I expected. She smoked the weaves! People were applauding!
The effort and time I put into her start lines did pay off. I saw a lot more control and focus from her throughout the weekend. She's right on the cusp of understanding that agility is a team sport.
Our next training goal: running contacts. Even though I have taught and used stopped contacts with every other fox terrier I have done agility with, I don't think I can realistically and reliably get stopped contacts from Frankie in a competition setting. Rather than fight her, I want to use her natural talents to make our teamwork smoother. Top competitors train running contacts to shave precious hundredths and thousandths of seconds off their time. That's not my goal. We are not world team material, and she's plenty fast to earn top placements in her classes once we work out the teamwork thing. I think that running contacts will feel more natural to her, and that will improve our communication on the course.
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