Gracie does it again!

Mum, Gracie and I went to a Show N Go yesterday put on by Anything's Pawsible. Great weather day, nice site. Couldn't have asked for a better agility day.

Our focus for the day was to work me for exercise and my dogwalk contact. Focus for Gracie was general focus on Mum, hopefully no running off, and doing weaves in a competition like environment.

Mum started out with Gracie. On their first run Mum had Gracie do a few obstacles and then treated if she did them well and focused on Mum. Then the plan was to run Gracie on a second run through the entire course, and if Gracie did it well and focused, then she would get a humongous 'jack pot' at the end.

Her first run was well focused. Our Trainer said that Mum got a little too far ahead of Gracie in the weaves, so Mum took mental note for the next run. Gracie ran off after the finish, but that was Mum's fault for not giving her a job to do after.

Her second run was really, really nice. Gracie showed Mum, and did everything she asked.

She got a little distracted at the start line, but came right to Mum and did the entire course like a little pro. She even did all of her weaves on the first try, and was super focused on Mum.

So then Mum ran me, I was kind of speedy, not my best, but not too bad. Got my first dog walk contact, so then Mum decided to work on it more since we were allotted three minutes in the ring per run. I bailed the next two, but made the last one, so we finished on a high note with some great treats.

My second run, I made the dog walk both times. We got two in since Mum added some obstacles to the run at the end. Mum was really happy with that, so we finished again on a high.

Here are the vids of both of our last runs, along with playtime when we got home from the SNG:


Our plan going forward: For me - continue working with the mouse pad on a board at home, hopefully one flat on the ground if Mum can get one painted quick enough. In the meantime, we'll prop our teeter stationary and work on that board. I really have the mouse pad down on the flat, hitting my paws in it over 90% of the time. But I still am not yet connecting the mouse pad on the contact boards.

The plan for Gracie is to continue working on focus and the mouse pad, and begin adding the pad to the contact; at practice doing mostly short sequences with lots of rewards, and then try to get in one full run at each practice with a big jackpot for being focused.

Mum is considering entering Gracie in two runs on just one day at one of the USDAA trials coming up. But she is still debating what stress effect it will have on Gracie running both of us in one day. Still to be determined. But she is definitely going to enter her in the CPE trial in December (one or two days with two runs per day, and me doing one run).

We are super proud of Gracie completing that full run yesterday. We're now thinking that maybe that perfect run a couple of weekends ago in Snooker at the CPE trial wasn't a fluke? Guess time will tell. Good job, Gracie!

We want to give a big thank you to Rocco's and Rudy's Mum for video taping us yesterday. Pugs rule!

There was a really nice photog at the SNG yesterday and he put the pics on Flickr and said we could use them any way we want. Anthony, thanks so much for taking such great pics! Now we have more agility pics of Gracie (and me, of course!).