Monday, January 17, 2011

Tangle's first group class

Tangle has done a puppy class, a couple of private lessons and today was his very first agility group class. The class was with a bunch of pups roughly his own age and varying skill levels. The class was indoors on the astro turf kind of grass.

In general Tangle did awesome. We have been working on most of the things that were covered in class so much of that was review. The curve ball for me was Tangle's distraction with crumbs all over the agility floor. He is a fairly high drive pup, but was totally into shopping for crumbs. This distraction level in my dogs is new to me.

There could be a couple of things going on: 1) my treats didn't have a high enough value 2) Tangle did this same thing in his first private (same facility), could be just couping with something new 3) stress relief

So, my plan for next week is to take 1) very high value treats 2) his most favorite squeaky toy that he goes over the top for 3) be as relaxed as I can be so that my stress doesn't influence him 4) this week work on rewarding him more, not marking any mistakes.

In class we worked on: single jump drill, double jump drill, pin wheel drill, and the bang game on the teeter. My homework for this next week will be to perfect the pin wheel drill. I need to work more on sending him forward, but making sure there is no disconnection as I am moving into my next position.