Agility Training

Today I went to training with Kenny and had a great session. I really enjoyed it and thought it worked well on the points that needed work.

We started with the channel weave for Pebbles. This is like a weave but every second pole is pulled outwards so she can run straight through the middle. This means she can go fast and will work independently of me. Up until now she would not weave unless I am right beside her. This exercise aims to work on this and allow me to cross behind her. By next season we hope to have some great angled weave entries and the ability to cross behind and move away from the weave. She was starting to do some really good angles and was running ahead of me which was great. I can see this hard work all paying off by next year.

Barney started by working on the dog walk. Kenny started him on a new technique to try and get him fast and confident on the down plank. This involved a set of sticks with a rope tied between them sitting at the bottom of the down plank. This meant Barney had to go under this. We then put a bit of chicken onto a tub about 7m away from the bottom of the dog walk for Barney to run towards at speed (this technique had been used previously). We started by putting Barney half way down the plank and getting him to go under the barrier. He did this a few times and soon was going the full length of the dog walk and running under the barrier to the food. I was really pleased with this and loved the fact that Barney was getting to run flat out and not getting scared of being stopped. This was the cause of him crawling down the down plank. He still has many sessions of this to keep building the speed but I can see how it will work in the long run and I am so determined to achieve consistent dog walks with Barney!

Then we did some work on straight line speed over jumps working in front of me. Barney did this so well and even did 2 jumps at each end at an angle. All independently of me and at speed. Very Happy. Pebbles was not so good at this one still looking behind to find me between jumps and not going without me. Work to be done here me thinks.

Finally we finished by putting these sequences together with a couple of blast courses. Barney was amazing he sped off without me and did most of the course with me shouting commands remotely. The course finished with the dog walk with the barrier running onto the tub with food. He did this really well.

Pebbles did well too and was really good with the weave allowing me to cross behind and ran well down the jumps.

It was one of my favourite training sessions for a long time and I really, really loved it. More of the same please!