Practice Day

I sweet talked Amy into letting me borrow her car (it is Mother's Day) so I could go out to the agility field to do a bit of training.  I am not very creative when it comes to jump work, so I usually just set up a double box jump, but I found this set-up in a Clean Run magazine and thought I would give it a try.  It was a lot of fun and there are so many things you can do with this.  Front crosses, rear crosses, lead out pivots, pinwheels, etc.  I worked this with both dogs, doing a few different skills and challenges with each of them.  I loved this little jump grid.  

I worked the dog walk with Bosley.  I lowered it to baby height for the first couple tries and then moved it up to full height.  He did great and I was less stressed today.  As long as I keep my distance from him and don't race him across, he seems to be fine.  If I move in too close he tends to push away from me causing him to lose some balance.  His contacts are great.  I also worked with him to get a verbal turn off of a contact.  He finally started to get this concept and was turning off of the A-frame and into a tunnel with only a bit of hesitation.

Maggie worked a bit on her weave poles today and I was getting nice lateral distance.  She tired pretty quickly, so I didn't push her too much.  I also jumped her a bit at 16" and she seemed to do fine.  No hesitation over the jumps and I don't think that she dropped one bar.

(Typical Maggie agility face)

Here is a nice shot showing the difference in size between Maggie and Bosley.  Last week when Maggie went back to class, a few people remarked how small she seemed.  She is the same size as she has always been, but everyone got so used to seeing only Bosley that they forgot there is such a large size difference between the two of them.