Lily had her first agility class this eve and while I had my suspicions she'd be a really good agility prospect, she was just *fantastic*. It may be that I am better at training too now, having learned some better ways to teach than when I first tried with Jaspar! :lol: , but she learned every single piece of equipment except the seesaw in an hour, and faster than Jaspar did. She LOVED it! She couldn't believe she got to do something fun AND get cheese!! :rotfl:
She is really going to be good though, I think. She actually got the basic idea of 'weave' on the weave poles in about 10 minutes of work, which took me ages with Jaspar. She's so small she can only do the small jumps but she was flying over five in a row; so funny to see her go. She is also very focused too, just like Jaspar, and has good intuition for what to do. I have honestly never seen her so happy; it was really fun and can't wait for next week now. All this was only an intro to each piece but I was so impressed with the barky little dickens.
Part of my reason for doing this is to also better socialise her as she can be snappy with other dogs, mainly females, and this gives her a chance to be around other dogs while learning to focus on other things. Also allows me to work a bit on desensitizing her to the other dogs.
The other people in the class are really nice though I am sure they think I have the worst behaved dog in Miss Snappy. :roll: There's one tiny terrier but all the rest are big dogs.
Afterwards a group came in that uses the room, all women who are really good at agility and compete. One of the dogs is qualified for Crufts in agility -- a black and white Corgi cross -- so watch out for him on TV or live, those of you going over! He was so fast and just whipped through the poles; amazing. I will miss Crufts entirely, as I'll be on holidays with my family. Darn. :|
She is really going to be good though, I think. She actually got the basic idea of 'weave' on the weave poles in about 10 minutes of work, which took me ages with Jaspar. She's so small she can only do the small jumps but she was flying over five in a row; so funny to see her go. She is also very focused too, just like Jaspar, and has good intuition for what to do. I have honestly never seen her so happy; it was really fun and can't wait for next week now. All this was only an intro to each piece but I was so impressed with the barky little dickens.
Part of my reason for doing this is to also better socialise her as she can be snappy with other dogs, mainly females, and this gives her a chance to be around other dogs while learning to focus on other things. Also allows me to work a bit on desensitizing her to the other dogs.
The other people in the class are really nice though I am sure they think I have the worst behaved dog in Miss Snappy. :roll: There's one tiny terrier but all the rest are big dogs.
Afterwards a group came in that uses the room, all women who are really good at agility and compete. One of the dogs is qualified for Crufts in agility -- a black and white Corgi cross -- so watch out for him on TV or live, those of you going over! He was so fast and just whipped through the poles; amazing. I will miss Crufts entirely, as I'll be on holidays with my family. Darn. :|