Hello hello, and welcome back to Teacher’s Pet, a column on all things training! Every other #TrainingTuesday, Brussels.Sprout, will share his how-tos for learning new tricks, updates on his own adventures in agility competition, and his favorite tips for helping you and your pup bond over training.
Ok, I promise the next time we give you an agility update it will be tales of victory and qualifying runs, but for now the turf wars rage on…
A few weeks ago we shared our experiences of Sprout meeting turf and having a grand ole time zooming around the ring. This past weekend, we found ourselves back on turf and frustratingly (or delightfully, depending on your POV) we founds ourselves doing more zoomies than agility. But, by the end of the weekend we learned the important lesson of how really staying “connected” with your dog and working as a team is critical to agility.
Here was our first run Saturday afternoon: it starts off great, but derailed a few obstacles in…
And that was it – were were done for the day! The next day we came back, and I was hoping it was out of his system, but nope.
More zoomies. Part of what’s going on was we were losing our “connection” So now it was time for our last run of the day and I’m happy to report he didn’t zoom and we finished!
My goal here was to really ensure we stayed connected through each obstacle and to not even give him the millisecond chance to decide to zoom. If you notice him come out of both tunnels you can see him quickly debate the zoom but then decide to come back to me and keep working!
At the end he blew past the last obstacle, but I managed to get him back on track and finish and was SUPER excited and proud (as was the supportive crowd!) We didn’t get a qualifying score though as we were over the course time.
At this stage our adventures in agility competition are still more about adventures than competition, but we’re getting there. Like I said, next time I report back on agility it’ll be with news of success. Stay tuned!
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