We went to Countryside Agility to do some practice and to work on certain areas. I packed our 12 poles in our new equipment bag that Laurie made - Thank you, dear! And loaded up with toys and treats then we were off. My main focus was to work on the weaves and get her confidence back on the teeter since she hasn't consecutively ran on one for some time as before class, I usually get her on it just once and she gets hesitant about it. The other area was correcting the weave pole problem which I mentioned in yesterday's blog.

Anyhow, after the lady at the bookstore opened up the facility, it was cold! Once illuminated, the temperature increased somewhat. I brought everything in and started to assemble 6 poles. I took Chloe out and stretch her out. It was time to have some fun! I revved her up by using her football and then sent off to her weaves on the poles that she is familiar with. She doesn't look comfortable going through them. I was tempted in opening them up but I got lazy and hey, this just first time doing this and I am pretty sure I'll be doing this again on the next visit. I'll throw once she completes them and then start raising the requirement which in this is speed. Once she was comfortable I put my 6 poles to the competition set thus having 12 poles. And you know, the speed didn't change regardless of what poles were being used first. I begin to notice something. I did set up a complete 12 poles using the competition base and the same speed. We'd take a break and I'd play fetch with her and when she would change direction or try to stop, she would slide.

I wanted a baseline time for today's competition 12 poles for something as reference as this year progresses. The times ranged from 3.46-3.53 in comparing to the outside environment (our backyard), she's from 2.5-2.8s. There is a big difference there and I hope the solution is cutting the fur under her paws. When she was jumping, she was at what it looked like full speed which I am use to seeing, she would go wide after the jump and slide. At time progressed, her jumps got tighter which I don't know if it was because she went slower or my timing and positioning. Once she hit the poles, today's entries were always fast but slowed dramatically when going through the poles. All momentum was lost something wasn't right and she wasn't comfortable maneuvering around the poles.

It was time to move onto another obstacle, the teeter-tot. The teeter workout went slow and started getting better the more times she went on it. Practice makes perfect as they say. In the beginning she wanted to jump off and then started running on it. I wasn't going to force a 2o2o but if she offered, she got reward with some liver.

Then it was time for some distance work in which I just send to obstacles, jumps and tunnels from a distance. That went well she hiccuped once or twice out of 25 attempts from a distance around 10'. I couldn't go any further as I would bump into other obstacles.

Now it was time to take up on Denise's offer to try the JWW course that was used back in November. But first I had to remove and pack my poles and put away the other 6 competition poles and fix one of the jumps. I put Chloe in her crate and walked the course.  There were certain issues I had with the course, first, I didn't what direction I was suppose to go at the start because the positioning jumps 1 and 2. They were next to each and its going to be a wrap around or 180 jump and jump 3 was about 15' somewhat on the same plane as 1. The other issue was where was 13 and 14. I didn't find them. So assumed on jump which was 5 and 17 was 13 and the weaves were 14. I mainly used front crosses throughout the course. I did try a rear cross and Chloe didn't like that much so I need to continue on working on the rear cross. We had an issue with 11 because I was asking for a lot from Chloe and I wanted a lot of lateral separation. The problem was that she couldn't see me because of the building column and would refuse to jump. So I had to wraparound the column. Yet, at jump 3 is almost the same scenario and she had no problems with it. Because 3 is inline with a column that I ran at the opposite. Dogs are funny!

Her speed surprised me because I don't know what version of Chloe is going to show up but I think she is starting to get the hint. With the exception of the weave poles, her speed was pretty much on par from what I am using to seeing and running with. We did run the course several times because we had some problems mainly because of ....

me!

It was mainly a positional and timing issues where I was either, wasn't there on time or body language was wrong.  For one thing, when I am in the backyard, I don't say "Jump!" anymore, talking and running I don't like very much. I want the dog and I to read each other. There were times when going to jump 11, that I would turn my shoulder way too early and it would pull her off her commitment. The problem I have is from a distance that I am assuming she is going to commit to it which is a big no no. She was still watching me and when I pulled my shoulder to head in between 12 and 13, that yanked her away from 11. This was all prior to her losing sight of me. This verifies what Linda Mecklenberg mentioned in her handling article in Clean Run. Chloe wasn't committed and I pulled her off the jump. And as one of my shirts says, "Praise the Dog, Slap the Handler!" No truer words than that! There will also times when she lost sight of me, it pulled away from the jump. I am learning a lot here!

We successfully did the course twice and the other times there were refusals yet sure learned a lot today! One thing is for sure, my backyard is the same length and its width is half of what facility has which meant that I had to run more than usual.