We had a nice agility class today...nothing spectacular but it did really hit me how much he's learned, and how much agility has done for us in terms of our relationship and how responsive he is to me.
He's still having a few issues with the collapsible tunnel...he hasn't been quite right with it since our little accident. We had to end class a few minutes early today due to unforeseen circumstances so I asked my trainer if I could just use the last 10 minutes to do several repetitions on the collapsible with Ben....in the beginner's class we used to repeat one obstacle several times in a row, but not in this one and he had to go back to that just because the accident wigged him out. By the end of that he was doing really well, going through it the first time I asked with no issues...so...progress!
What really impressed me, though, was that after I had asked if I could do that, my trainer told everyone to use the last 10 minutes of class to practice on any of the equipment if we wanted to. So we had all these dogs off-lead in a contained area and NOT ONCE did Ben try to run off or get another dog to play or generally act like a twit LOL. He stuck by me when I had to straighten out the tunnel every time, just hanging out and waiting for me to ask him to do something. 6 months ago, that would have been totally impossible - he'd have been racing around like a mad puppy and chasing all the other dogs. He was off-lead, he could be doing whatever he wanted...but he was staying with me because he chose to, because the anticipation of what fun thing *I* might ask him to do was better than seeking whatever gratification he might find on his own. It was a cool thing to see and realise.
It also struck me just how much they learn....really great agility teams make it look so easy, but so much of this is a completely alien thing for a dog to be doing and it's amazing to me when they learn and remember to do something that, while fun, must be so very odd for a dog to do. We did the seesaw a few times to end on a high note (Ben loves it) and I don't even need to say "wait" or "easy" anymore to remind him about it tipping...that's not remarkable, I know a lot of dogs who can do it on their own, but looking at it from the perspective of it being something for a dog to learn which is so unnatural, it's really cool to see them absorb something like that.
Ramblings over, back to your scheduled programming.