Agility class

In Thommo's class we worked with a Snooker course - Snooker has recently been introduced as an official ANKC event. So in Dusty's class afterwards, all of the obstacles were set out. Our instructor divided the course up into short sequences, which we backchained, sending the dogs to a target and rewarding them on arrival.

Some of the sequences were harder than others. The jump tunnel jump got quite a few dogs running past the tunnel opening. As Le explained it there were four reasons for this:

• People got caught behind the wing of the jump, and in stepping around it pulled their dog to the right and away from the entry.
• People were behind their dog at the jump and the dog turned back towards them missing the entry.
• People turned too soon, dropping their left arm before the dog had committed to the entry.
• The tunnel curved to the left, away from where the dogs knew the reward was.

Once we had sorted out our handler paths and body language even the young dogs had no problem with the sequence.