UPDATED! Chester is having his first Agility class on Feb 5!

[Cathy Moon]

Wow, that training facility looks great!! You're going to have fun!

[GudrunTheRed]

Update after the first class: So we went to class last night and HE LOVED IT! There are 5 other dogs in the class including an adorable little terrier mix who is owned by our local NBC 12's morning meteorologist Andrew Freiden! He's a really nice guy and his little terrier was awesome and so well behaved.

The other dogs included an adorable long hair Chihuahua, a Miniature Pincher, a Maltese and another Cavalier! The other Cavalier is a 2 year old named Maury and who's done flyball before and he was great last night!

So...Chester did really well. He was not a bit afraid of any of the equipment and I have a feeling the biggest challenge will be the jumps, but we'll see how it all progresses. I'm very happy all the other dogs are small and so well behaved. It's going to be a great class!

[KimNIndy]

cool i'm really excited for you two! glad to hear the class went well!

i can't wait for indy to learn the basics (he had his first class last night too--beginners obedience hee hee) so he can go on to agility. long journey ahead

you know you are going to have to send us some photos once things get going! do you plan to compete with chester in the future or do flyball? i'd never heard of that until i saw it on crufts and was so impressed!

the place you are going to looks great---in fact it looks better than most sports facilities i used when i was growing up

enjoy the classes!

k

[arasara]

Oh come on Monica - IF he does well!? We all know Chester will be the star of the class!!

How cool that your news anchor has a dog in your class! I would have freaked if I seen the news man!

Congrats to you guys - I am sure the jumps will be fine they just take some getting used to from what I have heard - high value treats!

Take care little Mr. Chester!

[GudrunTheRed]

Thanks for your encouraging words guys! It's very hard to tell who will be the actual star of the class at this early stage since all the dogs are so well behaved and happy to be there.

The trainer gave us homework this week: to work on getting our dogs to do a good solid "Down" from the standing position. I've been working with Chester several times a day using a clicker and plenty of little treats and he's getting much better. Sometimes he goes into "Sit" first and then "Down" but we're working on it.

As far as competing goes...it's too early to tell how well he will do. The other Cavalier in the class does flyball but his Mom says he's absolutely nuts for tennis balls anyway. Chester couldn't give a toss about tennis balls most of the time, but we'll see what develops.

I'll bring my digital camera to the next class and get some pics of my class mates!

[Cathy Moon]

Ooo, you're so lucky all of the dogs are small! We had all sizes of dogs and constantly had to change the height settings on all the jumps.