Agility Natural

Tonight's class with Blynn went well.  I have to say at first I had my doubts.  I'd planned to arrive early, but didn't plan on two accidents on I-5.  So got there, was rushing around, setting up our crate and getting ready.  Meanwhile Gimme is in the car, shrieking her head off and throwing a bonafide fit.  I don't know if she remembered the place from when we had our private lesson with Daisy, or if she was responding to my rushing. She was pretty high when we came in, bug-eyed with excitement and not really calming down, despite a lot of peanut butter Kong ball.  Every little noise had her jumping up and wanting to investigate.  I confess I was thinking this was not going to be workable.

When our first session on the floor came, I kept her on leash, mostly dragging it.  I used the peanut butter tube as a lure, passing it from one hand to the other.  I started out rewarding her after every obstacle and we got through all 15.  We needed Blynn's help with the curved tunnel and the full height teeter, but everything else went smoothly.  The full height dogwalk didn't faze her.  She did a full height aframe over a year ago, went at this one without hesitation.  We did 12 inch jumps, since I had her in her EasyWalk harness.  There were twelve weave poles and since she hasn't been trained to weave, I lured her through six, then pulled her out.  Blynn pulled those away and then we did the last six the same way.

Then we still had time left to our turn, so I just did the same course, rewarding after 2 or 3 obstacles and without dragging the leash.  Gimme is highly focused when I have the peanut butter tube.  Blynn helped again with the tunnel and we spent a little extra time getting Gimme to do it independently.  After her first working session, she calmed down considerably.

For our second turn later on, we spent a little extra time on the teeter, since Gimme was rushing it and I didn't want her to crash it and scare herself.  Everything else went smoothly.  By the second time through the course, when I was luring the 12 weaves, Gimme got ahead of me at the end and finished them without me!  She had great single-foot striding and just did it as if we'd actually trained to that level.  Sometimes this girl is just too damn smart.

I had her sit in the car for a bit between that and the second course.  When our turn came, we spent some extra time on the tire jump, which she'd never done before.  Blynn put it down on the floor and I was tossing cheese through it.  After a few tries of that, Gimme left me for the first time all evening.  Turns out she was headed to her crate for the jar of peanut butter that sat on top.  When she came back I whipped out the peanut butter and put her to work.

She did everything so quickly, that we got further down course than Blynn was prepared for and the last couple jumps were still set at 20 inches.  Gimme took the first one and then balked at the second.  I swung her around and she took them both in stride.  Since she's never jumped more than eight inches, I was very pleased with her at that.  She really has a beautiful efficient jumping style and seems to like jumping.

I love that the Mecklenburg handling system is so intuitive to the dogs. Yes, I've done a lot of flatwork training, but there were many things I had not trained and Gimme just did them as if they made perfect sense.  Because of that, we were able to move through the course smoothly.  I did have to be closer to her than I would for an experienced dog, but I didn't have to be right on top of her.

I think she will learn to work distance pretty quickly.  She clearly likes this agility game and did so well that she made me look good.  I should probably mention... she is going to be fast...   REALLY  R E A L L Y  F A S T