Agility Epiphany

I was thinking on the way to class that since Gimme and I have done so little lately, that I needed to make sure our class time was highly rewarding, to help her through the distractions.  So I had planned to reward more often and unpredictably... every few obstacles, but not in any pattern.  And, of course, if she did anything especially well to jackpot the stuffing out of it.

It occurred to me that I have a tendency to do too much - for instance, too many obstacles in a sequence.  In some ways, Gimme looks ready for that, but really, given how much actual agility training she has had, she's really still a novice at agility.  Sequencing is rewarding for me, but I'm not sure that is true for her yet. Not that she doesn't like agility, she just isn't addicted to it yet.

When we started our first turn, she was pretty distracted and it took me a bit to get her focus.  I spent about a third of our first turn just working on focus at the startline, moving with me in "heel" or "side", setting up and staying put.  With lots of rewards to make it meaningful for her to work through the distraction.  When I had the focus, then we moved on and did sequences.  She did well, but not as well as I know she is capable of.

When I was walking the second course, I asked Blynn if backside-sends is the new thing in agility, since we see so much of it in class.  She said they are seeing a lot of it in advanced levels, depending on venue.  She also said I didn't have to do that and could alter the course to make it more flowing for Gimme.  So I walked the course with the plan to leave out almost all the backside-sends.

That time around Gimme did verrrrrry well, was very focused and did some really nice stuff.  She was highly focused and really worked nicely with me.  She is really getting the idea of working at a distance on big arcs and yet, reads me correctly and jumps in collection where my handling calls for it.  Another thing she did that was so nice was after Blynn nagged at me to get the cue out sooner, when I said "poles" Gimme, turned and looked for them and headed right over to them.  She missed the entry a couple times (not an easy one), but she is really ready to start moving along and doing them independently.  I expect we'll make big progress when spring comes and we can train them at home again.

On the drive home I was thinking and realized that I'd been doing the backside-sends in class because I could, because they were rewarding for me.  I remember the first time we tried it how impressed I was that APHS handling makes so many things intuitive to the dog, so that Gimme could do it even though we hadn't trained it.  And we still haven't trained it... which means its crunchy for her and lacks flow.  Heck, we haven't actually even trained a plain forward send, which the backside-send is based on.

So, bad me, I've been guilty of sucking some of the fun out out agility for her.  Because she is a big girl, all grown up, and since we do so much training on so many things, its easy to forget that she's still an agility-baby.  Gimme didn't learn much from class, but she had a lot of fun.  I learned a lot, though, and my learning will lead to her learning in the future...