Thanks, Polona!

With Hogan I’m usually able to run a course clean (or close to it) on the first attempt. He’s slower than the wild squirrels, but I think it’s more a question of timing. I know where Hogan is going to be on the course and can plan accordingly. With Lyric and Omi there are far more uncertainties – how much do I have to support a particular obstacle, can I get there for the BC……? I often avoid doing BCs with them because I’m afraid of stepping on them or cutting them off.

With that in mind, we tried the BC/K-turn drill. 🙂 I really haven’t got the K-turn at all 😛 , but I think the BCs are getting better.

Thank you for the great feedback – I love this class! 😀 I do feel we’re making progress. Lots of table and teeter work to do, though!

Lyric has her height card in AKC but not in Bermuda (Bermuda Kennel Club). It’s a different organization and issues its own height cards. Too bad. In the US UKI recognizes height cards issued by other organizations…..but Bermuda doesn’t. Funny thing is the judge who measured Lyric here is an AKC judge (Bermuda doesn’t have its own judges).

I did sort of give up on turns, at least temporarily. Until I could trust Omi to take the obstacle in front of him (at least most of the time), turns weren’t a huge priority. 🙂 If we were to only run AKC style courses, we could probably forget about tight turns. Daneen Fox and her Pap Masher have won just about everything there is to win…….without ever making a tight turn! 🙂 European-style courses are a lot more fun, though. Even if we don’t see them in competition for the moment, I hope that at some point we’ll be able to run more challenging courses. Carina tells me that the Danish Cup is a really fun event – maybe one day we’ll get there. I’ll check out Pascal, Efi and Mary’s threads and we’ll start working on deceleration cues. A ball behind the wing would be great for Omi! We also need to work serps, threads and backsides at speed.

Tonight’s session was a short one, as we got rained out. I did successfully add in a couple of wraps with Omi. It took Lyric a couple of tries to figure out the game, but once she did she was flying! 🙂

Thanks, Polona!

Yes, now that you point it out I can see that I was consistently late on that last turn 😛

Today we ran the other advanced sequence from Lesson 3. As usual, it was more challenging with Omi than Lyric 🙂 I think Omi’s obstacle focus is slowly getting better, but we’re not there yet.

Thanks, Polona!

Given the option, I will almost always choose to run more dogs. Since we have to travel so far for trials, the more runs we get the better 🙂 Even if we have fewer clean runs, every dog teaches me something different…….and we have fun every time we enter the ring 🙂

Yes, I’d really like to help both dogs be smoother and faster! At least I’m doing a better job staying out of their way 😛 Lyric is actually consistently faster than Omi, even though she’s not running full speed.

I wish I still had the course maps, but I didn’t keep them. For small local trials they don’t post them online, only for major competitions. We do have agility trials here in Bermuda 10 days from now. I’ll be sure to save the course maps from those runs.

Tonight we did the advanced sequences from Lesson 3, but the video failed 🙁 We’ll try again – hopefully tomorrow.

Well it was a fun weekend, but pretty hectic. It was a 2-day trial with only 2 runs per day. I ran Lyric and Omi along with 3 dogs belonging to a friend. Two of them don’t really know me, but they were good sports about it. 🙂 They all have different cues, so it was pretty difficult trying to keep everyone straight. Funnily I had more clean runs with the dogs I don’t own…….but then they’re all very experienced agility dogs.

I’m afraid you won’t be very proud of all the missing cues on Lyric and Omi’s runs, but each run had some things I was very happy about…..as well as a list of things to work on. The mats were very nice but different from any surface the dogs have run on before. It took Lyric a bit of time to get used to the footing. I think that’s why she faulted the weaves in her first run. I don’t have video of Omi’s first run, but he was a good boy.

Hi Polona,

Welcome back!! Hope you had a great time at AWC. Unfortunately I didn’t get to watch that much, as we had an agility seminar here in Bermuda this weekend. It was a great seminar, though!

We tried various weave exits to give you an idea what’s working and what’s not. Initially the blue tunnel was overlapping the poles just a little; then I pulled it further across (though it’s hard to see in the video). Omi had more trouble weaving to the side of the tunnel than Lyric. 🙂