Return to Agility

After four months with no agility - no training, no trials - Dusty, Thommo and I went back to training at Canine Fun Sports last Friday and to an ADAA trial on Sunday.

In the training session we worked on discriminations, layering and distance work with a semicircle of jumps behind a tunnel, and then on control on contacts and table. My footwork and hand signals were a little rusty, but the dogs seemed to pick up where they left off.

Thommo has sore front feet - x-rays on thursday this week - so I only entered him in one event. It was a good quick run, with perfect weaves but he had a refusal and a knocked bar at the end of the course so his feet may have started to hurt. A couple of tight pull offs eliminated most of the competition so he ended up with a non-Q first place.

In Dusty's agility runs I continued what we had been practicing in class and asked for a full 'down' on the contacts and a wait for an 'OK' which added seconds to our time, but she had clear rounds in both Starters and Elementary and third-place ribbons. In Starters jumping she had a great, focused run to get a Q and a first-place ribbon. However by Elementary jumping we had had some heavy rain and she was reluctant to 'down' at the start, I started too close to her, behind the wing, and then pulled her off jump 2 as I ducked around. After that it was another good run, but no Q and no ribbon.