Yesterday was week 4 of pre-agility, and Brad made another video! We started out with four jumps in a row. Hestia had no problem with this at all! Then the teachers started angling the jumps and offsetting them between turns so that the dog would have to move side to side to get all the jumps. Hestia did fantastically!
Next we worked on tunnels. No problem there, either! In fact, the problem is getting her to wait for my cue before she runs through the tunnel! In the video, you’ll see that I wasn’t paying attention to the end of the tunnel, and neither was someone else who has a slightly reactive dog. Hestia ended up running full tilt into the dog! They were both so surprised that they just looked at each other, and then I was scooping her up in my arms.
I would have liked to do some more jump and tunnel sequences, but that wasn’t in the cards for today. Brad wasn’t there last week to film the jump and tunnel sequences we did.
Next we went to “the playground” with lots of little stations to work on things. The first station we tried was a series of wooden bars on the floor. The idea is to get the dog to be aware of their rear end and moving it so that the dog doesn’t trip over the bars, and they understand they need to pick up all 4 feet. Hestia did this flawlessly!
We also worked more on the teeter totter and on going up a short ramp. Again Hestia had loads of fun!
The one thing we struggled with was wrapping around the cones. Normally they’ll have special smaller cones set out for Hestia to use, but this time we used the big dog cones. It was a little bit harder for Hestia, but she got it eventually 🙂
Class was a lot of fun and a good break from my head. I’ve been verging on the edge of a psychosis these past few days, and it was good just to train and be with my doggie doing fun things.
It was incredibly hot in the building, and Hestia was drooping by the end (the pictures of her with the red tunnel are at the end). Brad even had one of his cameras overheat twice! But Hestia still wanted to keep going. She drank a lot of water when we got back to the van! I gave her a break the last 10 minutes of class and let her say hi to her friends Jeff and Jake.
Brad made a video, but the sound didn’t work, so you don’t get to hear my confused commands LOL. He fixed the sound so it will work next time!
Enjoy!
so.much.fun!!! <3