Agility Practice!

Lucky us, we got to go to agility practice two weekends in a row! Woofs!

This past weekend, Mum, Gracie and I drove to Norcross to a place that had run thrus. Here's a quick run down...

It was a nice building and the floor wasn't slippery at all. Loved that.

They had a nested course set up with an Exec STD and Jumpers, Nov STD and Jumpers all in one. Mum had both of us run the Exec STD course. She likes to run Gracie on more difficult courses because she focuses a little better when she's busier, and Gracie loves the DW and Frame. She modified it just a tad to be a little more novice friendly for her, like taking the tunnel after the DW instead of pulling toward a jump to the right like I did. She wanted me to run STD because we get to work on the DW and teeter, the obstacles we don't have at home and need more practice on.

I ran this course twice, then ran it again backwards, sort of....same with Gracie. So three runs for each of us during the two hours.

Gracie did pretty well on the focus stuff, came back to Mum every time even though she was wound tight as a drum before her first run...believe me she was way, way over even her top. (See that look in her eyes, that's the over the top look; the 'Mum can't snap her out of it look'  :).

It was a great test for a trial like environment. On her first run, she ran well, wouldn't stop to do her weaves, ran well again, then lept off the teeter, and ran into the chute where she got all tangled up. All that chaos seemed to actually calm her down a little and bring her back to reality; and the rest of her run was great.

So her next run is the one in the video, much better. Gracie never likes to stop and take the time to do the weaves, but she actually did about 2/3rds of them after Mum put her back in them. Good girl! Then her last run she ran this course backwards and...well, it was very nearly perfect. She did her weaves and everything!

Mum was really happy with her DW. She had started training Gracie on a running DW before we moved these past two times, but was having a lot of issues with her being so bouncy; and getting her to understand to keep her body low and nose down. So Mum started working on a 2o2o with her over the past two months to help her better understand the yellow and work on her nose touch to target. An odd plan, but it has seemed to really, really work. She made all her contacts on all her runs and seemed to really get the idea that she has to run it thru. One of her DW's was just amazingly speedy, and really nice into the yellow. Wish we had that one on tape!

Mum was super happy with my speed, I was raring to go every run. There was a somewhat difficult weave entry in my first run (I think that's the first one on vid) when Mum didn't front cross before; she likes to test me on those. Passed with flying colors!

Mum was pretty happy with my DW speed too, especially after the slow DW at our last trial. Guess what? No rubber this past weekend, but rubber at the last trial. Guess we need more rubber practice.

My weaves weren't super great, but not too bad. They had the type of weaves that have a very wide base, not my favorite since I'm a little guy. But I dealt with it. I was running so well coming out of the tunnel after the dogwalk that Mum had to layer some jumps when I was going up the frame, but it worked really well.

Mum was really happy with how we all did. She's a little rusty on the handling, but I'll whip her back into shape in no time. So here are our runs:




What a fun day! Looks like there is another run thru op coming up next Tuesday closer to us that we'll probably go to. Getting ready for the USDAA trial next month and maybe one in December. Woo, hoo!